Golf One And Done Picks By PoolGenius: Product Overview And Tutorial

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from PoolGenius, a site that has helped players win more sports pools for over a decade.

Example of the product’s top graded picks and data for the 2024 American Express

The 2024 PGA season marks a new era at PoolGenius with the release of our new Golf One And Done Picks product. If you’re playing in a PGA One And Done pool and looking to level up your pick research—and save time doing it—then this article is for you.

If you’re new to the site, for a limited time, you can also try out the Golf One And Done Picks product for free when you sign up for our free trial.

About The Product: Get An Edge In One And Done Pools

At PoolGenius, we’ve provided data-driven picks and research tools for football and March Madness pools for over a decade. More importantly, our subscribers have reported winning sports pools roughly three times as often as expected, based on the size of their contests.

As we began our product exploration into golf pools last year, we quickly realized that despite the rising popularity of PGA One And Done pools, it was difficult to find the various data needed for smart pick analysis all in one place. We also studied thousands of historical player picks in these pools and noted that many players also employed a suboptimal pick strategy.

Finally, in talking with One And Done pool players, we observed a wide range of weekly and pre-season preparation. For example, some players really love to dig into the numbers and study dozens of golfers, their recent scores, and past course performance. Other players feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of golfers available to pick each week and would like a quick and easy solution to narrow down the names.

Regardless of where you stand, two things are probably true: your time is valuable, and you want to make the smartest One And Done pick week in and week out. (Make no mistake, you’re always going to need some luck to win a One And Done pool, but a better pick strategy reduces your reliance on luck.)

With all of this in mind, we designed and built a product to help golf One And Done players of all stripes make more informed pick decisions and play strategically all season long. In this tutorial, we’ll walk you through how it works in five easy steps.

STEP 1: Set Up Your One And Done Pool For Customized Pick Advice

The smartest weekly pick advice for a One And Done pool has to take into account factors specific to both your pool and your entry. Context (from the total number of tournaments included in your pool to whether or not you need to make double picks for the Majors to the golfers you’ve already picked so far and can’t use again) drives strategy.

So, the first step toward getting customized advice in our Golf One And Done Picks product is for you to tell us a few key details about your pool. It only takes a few minutes if you have your pool’s details/rules handy, and we’ll ask you some questions like:

• The size of your pool
• How many entries are you playing
• Entry fee and prize payout details
• Which tournaments does your pool use
• How many golfers do you need to pick for each tournament

Once you have answered those questions, you’re ready to go for the season. You can set up as many different pools and entries in our product as you need, and after setup is complete, you will see all of them organized on your “My Entries” page:

STEP 2: Track Your Previous One And Done Picks

You can start using our Golf One And Done Picks product whether you are playing in a pool that is just about to start or in a pool that started weeks or months ago.

If you’ve already made picks for past tournaments in a specific pool, you simply enter the golfers you have already picked. The product will then use that information to highlight only the golfers you still have available to pick in future week pick analysis, and to guide its customized pick recommendation logic.

For each One And Done pool and entry you set up, just click on the “Save Or Update Your Picks” button in the product, and you will be able to log your past picks via a popup box. You can also delete or update a prior pick at any time.

STEP 3: View Tournament Purse Data And Strategy Advice

Once you are done entering your past picks, it’s time to evaluate your One And Done pick strategy for the current week.

Our popular Data Grid feature, which is a highlight of both Golf One And Done Picks as well as other PoolGenius products, is designed for this purpose. Whether you are a “Do-It-Yourselfer” who likes to dig deep into the data or someone who just wants to see a short list of golfers who are compelling potential picks, this feature has something for you.

At the top of each tournament’s Data Grid, you will see a quick tournament overview along with information on a key strategy factor for One And Done picks: the tournament’s purse size and where it ranks compared to other tournaments included in your pool.

(If you click on that “2nd tier” link, the product will pop up a list of the purse sizes for all tournaments used in your pool and show you where the current week’s event ranks on the list.)

This data is a key driver of weekly pick guidance. In short, you want to make sure that you’re using your best golfers in situations when they can win you the most prize money and planning picks for upcoming tournaments accordingly.

The last bullet point in the image shown above lets you know the rough quality level of golfer you should target as your current week’s pick and is followed by more custom analysis.

STEP 4: Evaluate Pick Grades And Golfer Data

Below the purse information and related strategy advice on the Data Grid is a large and detailed table of golfers, including everyone playing in the tournament. The information shown on each golfer includes:

• Our customized, entry-specific “Pick Grade” (if the golfer is a top option)
• The golfer’s data-driven PoolGenius power ranking and rating, which factors in both recent and longer-term performance
• Betting market information, including implied win odds, change in win odds, and the current and opening outright tournament winner odds
• Course performance info, including strokes gained and recent finishes

In addition, any golfer you have already picked and can’t use again will be grayed out in the table.

(If you click on the “Strokes Gained” link for the course, you can also see a quick summary of every round the golfer has played in the event in recent years.)

The Pick Grade is a key proprietary metric in the Golf One And Done Picks product. It highlights your most strategic pick options for the specific tournament shown, using customized logic. It accounts for where the tournament ranks in purse size compared to future tournaments included in your pool; it factors in golfer rating, betting odds, and course performance history; and it considers which golfers you have left to pick. The higher the Pick Grade, the better.

All of the columns in the Data Grid table are sortable, with the default being by descending betting odds. So, if you want to see our highest-rated Pick Grades, you can click on that header. For instance, here were the top Pick Grades for the 2024 American Express for one pool:

STEP 5: Make And Save Your Weekly One And Done Pick!

With the product’s customized Pick Grades and lots of relevant data at your fingertips, all that’s left is for you to make a highly informed weekly pick.

As we all know, golf isn’t like football, where specific teams may have a 70-80% chance (or greater) to win each week. In a golf tournament, there are typically groupings of multiple players who all have similar and far lower odds of winning. Picking a first or second-place finisher is much more of a crapshoot.

As a result, we designed the Golf One And Done Picks product to account for this much higher level of uncertainty. Rather than pretend that we know the exact pick that will maximize your odds to win your One And Done pool, we instead give you a short list of strategic picks that all look very solid for a given tournament. Then, you can pick your favorite from among that finalist group and factor in your own leans.

When you’ve made your final decision, you simply click a button to track your pick in our system. In the future, we also plan to link directly to your pool’s hosting site, so it will just be one quick click to go over there and submit your killer pick into your pool.

Ready To Use Golf One And Done Picks By PoolGenius?

The Golf One And Done Picks product is a first-of-its-kind tool designed specifically to provide an edge to players in PGA One And Done pools.

Over the course of a season and 30+ weeks worth of tournament picks, it will not only help you make smarter, more strategic decisions, but it can also help save you hours of time collecting and organizing relevant data and tracking your various picks across different pools. Not to mention that it’s simple and fun to use!

(For a limited time, new site users can also sign up for our free trial to test it out for no cost and no obligation.)