Fantasy golf is morphing and growing and changing by the year. Daily fantasy golf, through DraftKings and FanDuel, has become popular for golfers willing to put money behind a weekly fantasy lineup.
One and Done golf rules
One-and-done, in particular, has become a popular fantasy golf format. Pick a player each week, don't use them again and see what happens. At the end of the year, the person whose choices yielded the most official money or points wins. It's great.
Depending on your league, you will be ranked either based on the total amount of money all of your selections earn through the season, or, in a smaller number of leagues, the total FedEx Cup points earned.
Each week, a player picks a single golfer for that tournament. The goal is obviously to pick the winner every week. However, that's unlikely. So the goal is to pick the best player you can that week.
Each league has its own variations. Some will require picks for every event, including the opposite-field events. Some don't bother with those. Some stop the league at the end of the PGA Tour regular season. Some weight the money and points earned at the majors (and maybe The Players) with an additional multiplier. All of these rules variations can lead to strategy changes.
One and Done golf strategy
One and Done golf strategy kind of falls into two schools of thought.
The first is to pre-plan your year with players for as many events as possible, slating players for specific events where they have the best course history. Typically, that is a sound strategy for events where there are several players who have demonstrated a strong correlation between that course and a high finish.
The second school of thought is to select players who are playing the best golf at the moment. That's a reasonable thought as well. However, players that have played well for three or four tournaments in a row typically tend to fall off as they play longer. We're really looking for players who have finished high in two consecutive events.
In a perfect world, we'd pick players each week who love the host course (or the architect, state, grass, etc., similar to the host course) and who are playing well.
In one-and-done, it's a must to be careful to slot particular players for the biggest occasions, saving the better players for higher-purse events, then filling in the rest of the schedule with golfers who have some combination of current form and prior course history. This year, that strategy is even more important. There are fewer events in the season, as the PGA Tour has gone back to a calendar-year schedule. There are also eight Signature events, four majors, The Players and the FedEx Cup playoffs that all offer purses of at least $15 million. These 16 events will define your success, so be aware of using the best players you can at these tournaments.
In the other remaining events, we're looking to fill in with a mixture of veterans and up-and-coming players that make up the fields for standard and opposite-field tournaments. These events are not to be discarded. They can be the crucial difference in making the money or not in your league.
Each week, we offer one-and-done picks based on a tournament field, who is playing well and who has played well at the host venue in the past, as well as the purse of the tournament and with an eye toward future events. With proper planning and some fortunate timing, you can win your one-and-done league this year!
