PGA Best Ball Strategies — Lessons Learned from NFL Best Ball

It’s Friday, Dec. 27. Which means many of you are preparing for a championship NFL best ball sweat this weekend. Good for you, I’m not at all jealous! The rest of us have had NFL best ball juggernaut teams spoiled by injuries or disastrous playoff performances. Fortunately, PGA best ball is here. And while PGA best ball will never be as popular as NFL best ball, I would (and will) argue it’s a better game in many ways, even if you’re no golf expert.

The game is the same — you draft a bunch of guys and count the best each week. But there are plenty of differences too. There are no positions, you draft ten players and count the best six each week. There are also only six people per draft. This makes drafts crazy fun, because you can do them in like five minutes.

But imagine what would happen if the NFL announced that next season, teams would all play a different number of games, and we didn’t get to know ahead of time who would play more games and when their bye weeks would be. Sounds insane, right? Well, that’s kind of how it works for PGA best ball.

Signature Events

The PGA Tour has “Signature Events” that are harder to qualify for. Our best ball Rankings page has a column called “Status” that tells you who is qualified for these signature events (in the top 50) and who isn’t. Which brings us to…

Strategy Tip No. 1 — Draft a mix of players exempt for the Signature Events and players who are not.

We don’t get to know ahead of time exactly which tournaments each player will choose to play, but there are two general rules of thumb — guys in the signature events will play almost all of the signature events and guys outside of the top 50 will play as often as they can tolerate in order to qualify for majors and the signature events. So, getting a mix of these players ensures the highest floor possible of the number of guys you have teeing it up each week.

Scoring System

The scoring system for PGA best ball is similar to that of NFL best ball, which ironically is one of the biggest differences, too. Players only get points for what they do on the course:

There are no bonuses for finishing position (like winning the tournament), so volatility is less rewarded than it is in one-and-done contests or PGA DFS. But this also has an undesired effect — imagine if some NFL games were played on 80-yard fields and others on 120-yard fields. We’d see a boom of fantasy production as scores soared on the short fields and less scoring on the longer fields. Once again, this is actually how PGA best ball works! Some courses are easy and will produce a ton of birdies and eagles, while others, primarily played by the guys in the top 50, are more difficult tests.

Consequently, there can be significantly larger disconnects between skill level and “fantasy value” for PGA players than NFL players. This isn’t the most foreign idea — Joe Mixon and Alvin Kamara went rounds and rounds after some pretty not-that-great receivers this year. In a way, it’s like players in the top 50 are receivers and players unqualified for the signature events are running backs. I’m pushing the limit of the PGA and NFL comparisons here, but you get the idea (I hope). But because the non-signature courses are easier, it’s as if running backs got a point for every 7.5 yards and their TDs counted for eight points instead of six.

Strategy Tip No. 2 — guys who will play a lot, particularly on easy courses, get a large boost (hence, Eric Cole is going in the top 5 — more on him in a bit, though). 

OK, here’s where things really start to heat up and the money will be made…