PGA BEST BALL DRAFT STRATGY & UNDERDOG FANTASY PLAYER RANKINGS
Like with any Fantasy contest, strategy should be determined solely by the rules of the league. This seems obvious to those who’ve been on the Fantasy streets for years, yet you’d be shocked how many people simply chose to draft before leaning the rules. Actually, you probably aren’t shocked. People, by in large, are morons.
That’s a disclaimer I’ve given out for over a decade for home Fantasy Football leagues, DFS contests, whatever contest you join; honestly, it usually doesn’t make that much of a difference in the end. You’ll miss a few nuances that are custom to the format but in the grand scheme of the season, drafting the best players acts as a healing elixir. Knowing those esoteric rules can give you a slight advantage over the competition, but it’s not the skeleton key to victory. It’s more like the small keys in Zelda which help you advance from room to room to obtain the Boss Key or reveal a shortcut. Helpful, certainly.
Then, every once and again, there are specific scoring rules and formats which demand all of your attention because they can be exploited so easily. I played in a Fantasy Baseball league in 2010 which was a 5x5 Head-to-Head league, which was the style at the time. However, in that onion-on-your-belt style league there was one rule no one else noticed beyond me. I was the only loser who read them. There were unlimited daily moves. That one rule changed my entire draft strategy. I merely punted off ERA and WHIP, drafted hitters and closers and streamed starting pitchers through my three SP spots every day and I won 8-2 or 7-3 every week of the season until the commission saw what I was doing and changed the rules in mid-May. At which point I demanded my money back. After a few weeks of bickering about it, the money was returned to my wallet. Physical, not digital. Which, again, was the style at the time.
In the mid-00s, since that entire period of my life is a complete blur, I cannot recall exactly which year this was. Who needs the Men In Black neuralyzer when booze and drugs exist. Although, I can vividly recall what happen in a Fantasy Hockey championship match with my college friend, which should tell you how I was prioritizing life in that moment — not well. Or, really well, if you are completely results orientated, I suppose. On the last day of the season I was tied in a head-to-head match up with most of the categories solidly tilted to either side with no chance of coming back, except one: Penalty Minutes. That could be flipped. I was way behind in PIM, but knowing the was no cap on moves (seriously, most leagues back in the day were completely exploitable by knowing how many moves you could make in a given week), I dropped my entire roster and picked up goons for every slot in my lineup. There’s no stack quite like two guys fighting each other on skates for a double PIM onslaught. I entered the final day down 20 PIM and ended the day up by 100 PIM and claimed victory.
Hell, in the first few years I played Fantasy Football my league mates didn’t understand how valuable receptions were in PPR leagues because all the draft magazines they bought were exclusively “standard scoring” rankings, despite seeing the scores players put up every week. They were flummoxed how I crushed everyone, but the answer was LaMont Jordan and Todd Heap complimenting the good players on my team.
Fantasy was so easy then. It became far more difficult when people who didn’t watch a second of any game just read the rules, made spreadsheets, and started dominating DFS.
PGA PME HOT LINKS
The Sentry Research, Picks Show & PGA Best Ball Rankings Breakdown
2024 PGA TOUR/GOLF Year in Review with Geoff & Kenny Kim
Fantasy Golf Picks: Top Underdog Sleepers, Best Late Picks | 2025 PGA Best Ball Draft Breakdown
PGA/LIV, Ryder Cup Pay, Gambling Influence on Golf, Pace of Play, TV Coverage with Michael Kim
Underdog PGA Best Ball drafts aren’t quite as exploitable as those random leagues from the ancient days, but there is most definitely a specific way to approach drafts in order to even have a chance by the end. Like with most of the examples I gave from the past, only one thing matters: Volume.
The season is split into four rounds. The top team from each pod of six will advance to the following round before the final 261 teams compete against each other in Round Four for the $50,000 top prize. In case that’s too difficult to parse, you can’t win Round Four if you don’t advance past Round One. Seems logical; many drafters so far clearly do not apply logic to their drafts.
The PGA TOUR and its schedule is bifurcated between no-cut, signature events with all the same best players over and over all year long (with a few hangers on who play well enough to sneak in for an event or two) and the full-field, cut events with the rest of the players. You know, the players who are sponsored by companies, which even after searching them, you still have no clue what they do.
Here’s how each round is separated:
ROUND ONE
The Sentry
Sony Open
The American Express
Farmers Insurance Open
AT&T Pebble Beach Pro Am
WM Phoenix Open
The Genesis Invitational
ROUND TWO
Mexico Open
Cognizant Classic
Arnold Palmer Invitational
The Players Championship
Valspar Championship
Texas Children's Houston Open
Valero Texas Open
ROUND THREE
The Masters
RBC Heritage
The CJ Cup Byron Nelson
Truist Championship
PGA Championship
Charles Schwab Challenge
The Memorial Tournament
ROUND FOUR
RBC Canadian Open
U.S. Open
Travelers Championship
Rocket Mortgage
John Deere Classic
Genesis Scottish Open
The Open Championship
In order to win the grand prize, your team needs to maximize players from both sides, or, find the unicorns who will play in all signature events, Majors, and add some of the random tournaments to play more than everyone else. This is why Eric Cole, Sungjae Im, Davis Thompson, Ben Griffin are near the top of draft boards. Team which have the players who play the most easy tournaments are the ones which will be there in the end. Because actually winning golf tournaments doesn’t mean anything for scoring.
PGA BEST BALL SCORING
Objectively, a player skill comparison the winners between the strong and weak field events isn’t remotely close. In PGA best ball drafts, there’s no bonus for winning or placement points, there’s no multiplier for strength of field or donning a Green Jacket, there’s only raw scoring. Each drafted team consists of 10 total players, and the Top 6 scorers from your team each week will count to your scoring. You can build a team of the 10 Top players in the world and you won’t come close to advancing since you’ll be taking zeros across the board in the jabroni events. Which are actually the events where all the scoring happens.
Take a look at the raw birdie leaders on the PGA TOUR last season:
Ben Griffin 479
SH Kim 446
Tom Hoge 444
Eric Cole 442
Justin Lower 436
For reference, the guy who won nine times, Scottie Scheffler finished with 366 birdies. Six fewer than Chandler Phillips. A guy whose own family couldn’t pick him out from a lineup of one.
Now, some of that is disingenuous. Wilson Chandler Phillips did a ton of damage in alternate field events and late season tournaments which aren’t included in the scoring for Best Ball. It’s to drive home the point, though. Starts in weak field, resort course events are simply more valuable than Signature Event/Majors starts. Thus, finding those unicorns is paramount.
In Round Four you get both the US Open and the John Deere Classic. The will be very little overlap between those two fields. Oakmont is hosting the US Open this year. The last time the US Open was at Oakmont in 2016, Dustin Johnson won at -4. Four players finished under par that week.
Dustin Johnson 1st at the 2016 US Open
Round 1: 31.5
Round 2: 23.3
Round 3: 19.8
Round 4: 23.9
Total Fantasy Points: 98.5
Last year, Davis Thompson won the John Deere Classic at -28. All 77 players who made the cut finished at least -4. Let’s spotlight Rico Hoey who came T26 and finished at -15.
Rico Hoey T26 at the 2024 John Deere Classic
Round 1: 33.9
Round 2: 47.1
Round 3: 32
Round 4: 21.6
Total Fantasy Points: 134.6
Since no one player is going to lace his spikes for every event, finding the ones who will play the most lowest scoring (in real golf; highest scoring in Fantasy) tournaments is the key. Here are the events with the lowest winning scores from last season being played at the same venue this year:
The Sentry -29 (Round One)
American Express -29 (Round One)
John Deere Classic -28 (Round Four)
CJ Cup -23 (Round Three)
Travelers Championship -22 (Round Four)
Waste Management -21 (Round One)
Valero Texas Open -20 (Round Two)
Mexico Open -19 (Round Two)
THE PLAYERS Championship -19 (Round Two)
It shouldn’t be difficult to discern: Having a collection of the 60 players participating in The Sentry, who may also play in the American Express and Waste Management along with the Signature Events is the key to escaping Round One.
The hardest part of of all of this is predicting which players are actually going to show up for each tournament. They don’t necessarily tell us in advance, and can pull out for whatever reason at the last second. Except to prevent pregnancy. Scientifically, not an effective method.
PGA ONE AND DONE & FREE ENTRY
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PLAY IN THE 2025 RACE FOR THE MAYO CUP ONE AND DONE
Now, a few big names have committed to the American Express already, who are also playing in The Sentry:
Xander Schauffele
Patrick Cantlay
Justin Thomas
Sam Burns
Jason Day
Nick Dunlap
Billy Horschel
Those are the highest ranked (in the world rankings) who have publicly committed to playing at PGA West already. There will be more we can anticipate playing as well based on their schedule in past seasons. Sungjae Im, Wyndham Clark, Adam Hadwin, and more will likely all play both those events. Most of the bigger names and those qualified for the signature events have started to skip out on Phoenix because the scheduling change which sandwiches it between Pebble Beach and Riviera, both signature events.
However, Nick Taylor is likely to play six of the seven events since he’s the defending champion at the Waste Management and traditionally plays Sony and AMEX. Additionally, later in the season, like all Canadians, they’re essentially auto-committed to playing in the Canadian Open, which now moving to TPC Toronto, may set birdie records at world’s third oldest Open golf event. There’s just one problem: Taylor’s been awful since his win in Phoenix last year. So, he may simply suck in these events. These are the chances you’ll have to take, though — and get them right — in order to excel in this format and advance your teams to the end.
Frankly it’s easier to tell you who to avoid than who to take. There is some contrarian merit to drafting some high-end players who will have fewer starts early in the season. If you can sneak those teams through Round One, they’ll likely be the lowest owned of the elite group of players thus giving you a supreme advantage. But that requires far too many things to coalesce at the same time: You need to randomly draw a weak grouping on Underdog, the rest of your picks need to play way over their heads in Round One, and the contrarian players need to dominate and play events you weren’t expecting them to show up for later on in the season.
If that’s your strategy, slot machines may have better odds. Now, if all those players start to drop down in drafts to the sixth, seventh, eighth round; that’s a completely different story. I would draft Rory McIlory in Round 7; just not anytime before. Context matters.
Use this short hand and cross these guys off your list:
Anyone who plays overseas in January (Those events don’t count)
No LIV Guys (Even Bryson wins all Four Majors, it won’t make an impact)
Rory McIlory, Tommy Fleetwood, and Shane Lowry are all skipping The Sentry. Launch them into the sun.
Justin Rose, Tommy Fleetwood, Matthew Jordan, Tom McKibbin, Aaron Rai, Jordan Smith, Matt Wallace, Paul Waring, Francesco Molinari, Nicolai Højgaard, Rasmus Højgaard, Matteo Manassero, Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen, Niklas Nørgaard, Thorbjørn Olesen, Matthieu Pavon and Antoine Rozner are all playing in the Team Cup starting January 10-12, which is the week of the Sony Open. Since it’s happening in Abu Dhabi I would expect most of the them to stick in the Middle East until at least Torrey Pines, but probably Pebble Beach or later.
Robert MacIntyre, Adam Scott, Akshay Bhatia, and Rory McIlroy are all committed to playing in Dubai the fourth week of the season, the same week as the Farmers Insurance Open, so don’t expect to see any of them until Pebble Beach.
Of that group, MacIntyre and Bhatia still hold some value based on where they may play later in the season. MacIntyre will defending Canada and Scotland while Bhatia will defend at Valero. Plus, since Bhatia’s so young and trying to make a run at a pot on the US Ryder Cup team, he may jam in as many events as possible while he can. That’s still a chance I’d take for the right price. But he dropped from inside the Top 10 in my rankings to No. 36 after that news broke.
The only other name, not mentioned, who isn’t playing The Sentry is Scottie Scheffler. The world’s best player cut his hand the week leading into Hawaii and withdrew from the event before it started and it requires surgery. He says he’s still playing in the American Express in the third week of the season, however. If that’s the case I still don’t mind taking him at No. 2 in drafts because of of his Texas ties. While the majority of players at his level are taking a vacation, Scottie will play in two of the four Texas tournaments, maybe three, every year. 2024 was the first time he skipped the CJ Cup (Byron Nelson) in his career. If he decides to play in it, one of the easiest scoring events of the year, I believe you can still structure a team around Scottie that can advance out of Round One and potentially be dominating by the end of the year.
But maybe this injury caps his upside or he re-aggravates the hand injury and misses time and all those teams are dead. I’m not from the future. You think I’d be writing PGA Best Ball strategy article in the midst of NFL season if I was from the future? Please.
The Texas swing is actually quite important, and is probably one of the only strategy talking points few people are mentioning in drafts. It’s tough planning it out this far in advance because it happens in late March and early May, yet those are four non-signature events where starts from your team will be tough to come by. Weirdly, if you believe the offseason wrist surgery worked, Jordan Spieth is a terrific target. He didn’t qualify for the signature events, but will likely get sponsors exemptions into all of them, he’ll play almost every Texas event, and he’s still qualified for every Major and the Players. We have no update on his health, but his upside as a unicorn who plays a lot of both types of events is massive. I’ll gamble on his health and pray he comes back stronger.
Other than Spieth, Taylor Pendrith makes a fine target too. Maybe his new status on TOUR having qualified for every signature event and three of the Majors keeps him out of some of the tournaments he’s previously attended, but like Nick Taylor, as a Canadian, he’ll play the Canadian Open. Plus, as the defending champ at the CJ Cup, he’ll likely defend there as well. And he’s played the Rocket Mortgage each of the past three years (with some success) so there’s a chance he opts in there too. If he does, you’ll get three of the highest birdie events of the year from a player who also covers you in the bigger tournaments.
Jake Knapp fits this criteria as well. He’s only one of a handful who will likely play in the Sentry and the Mexico Open, as he’s the defining champion.
This isn’t a set a list but these are the players I currently project to play in both The Sentry & Mexico Open. It’s essentially the list of players in The Sentry who didn’t get automatic invitations to the Signature Events so they have to play the other part of the schedule.
Jake Knapp
Patton Kizzire
Harry Hall
Johnny Vegas
Davis Riley
Mav McNealy
Matt McCarty
Chris Gotterup
Rafael Campos
Kevin Yu
Finally, the other unknown is the The Golf League — TGL. While it may or may not have your interest, it’s happening, and a lot of the biggest names on the PGA TOUR are participating in it. The TGL schedule is Tuesdays in January, then Mondays and Tuesday through the end of the playoffs on March 24th and 25th. While it shouldn’t cause too many problems, it’s possible a few players don’t want to fly to Palm Beach Gardens, play on a Tuesday only to fly back to the West Coast for a Thursday tee time early in the season. I’m not factoring it in to my rankings, but it’s another angle to consider.
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2025 PGA Best Ball Rankings
Xander Schauffele
Sungjae Im
Corey Conners
Si Woo Kim
Eric Cole
Scottie Scheffler
Tom Kim
Sahith Theegala
Davis Thompson
J.T. Poston
Nick Dunlap
Justin Thomas
Sam Burns
Patrick Cantlay
Byeong Hun An
Denny McCarthy
Ludvig Aberg
Nick Taylor
Hideki Matsuyama
Collin Morikawa
Taylor Pendrith
Russell Henley
Brian Harman
Billy Horschel
Tom Hoge
Jake Knapp
Keith Mitchell
Max Greyserman
Christiaan Bezuidenhout
Wyndham Clark
Tony Finau
Mackenzie Hughes
Lucas Glover
Ben Griffin
Austin Eckroat
Akshay Bhatia
Maverick McNealy
Thomas Detry
Alex Noren
Davis Riley
Jhonattan Vegas
Harry Hall
Cam Davis
Kevin Yu
Matt McCarty
Nico Echavarria
Patrick Rodgers
Adam Hadwin
Jordan Spieth
Harris English
Stephan Jaeger
Keegan Bradley
Emiliano Grillo
Robert Macintyre
Daniel Berger
Cameron Young
Andrew Novak
Max Homa
Will Zalatoris
Jason Day
Patton Kizzire
Kurt Kitayama
Michael Thorbjornsen
Mark Hubbard
Sepp Straka
Viktor Hovland
Chris Gotterup
Michael Kim
Chris Kirk
Justin Lower
Andrew Putnam
Carson Young
Aaron Rai
Matt Fitzpatrick
Doug Ghim
Taylor Moore
Shane Lowry
Tommy Fleetwood
Rory McIlroy
Rasmus Hojgaard
Matthieu Pavon
Seamus Power
Brendon Todd
Thriston Lawrence
Min Woo Lee
Matteo Manassero
Adam Scott
Justin Rose
Adam Svensson
Rickie Fowler
Lee Hodges
Ben Silverman
Adam Schenk
Beau Hossler
Ryo Hisatsune
Max McGreevy
Chandler Phillips
Sam Stevens
Matt Wallace
Erik van Rooyen