Why this exists

Every year around Masters week, a friend would set up the pool. He'd open a Google Sheet, type out the field by hand, build a scoring formula, and spend his Sunday updating positions one row at a time. The pool was always a blast, the group chat, the trash talk, the moment somebody's sleeper jumped from T20 to T5. The pool was always worth doing. The mechanics of running it were always brutal.

That's the backwards thing about how most office pools work: the commissioner ends up doing 80% logistics so everyone else can enjoy 20% golf. Setting up. Pasting in the field. Chasing entries. Manually updating scores while trying to watch the back nine. The job of the commissioner used to be spreadsheet operator. It should have been host.

golfpools.co exists to flip that. The tool handles the field, the scoring, the live updates. The commissioner gets to be the person who started the tradition, not the person stuck behind a Google Sheet on Sunday afternoon.

How it's different

  • Prize money scoring by default. One stroke between 1st and 2nd at a $20M-purse major is a $1.44M swing in earnings. Same stroke between 49th and 50th is about $2K. Stroke totals weigh them equally; prize money captures the truth. We picked the format that actually reflects what matters, then built the infrastructure to compute it automatically.
  • Free for participants. The people you invite never need an account, never download an app, never enter a credit card. They click your link, pick their team, done. The friction at the "join" step kills participation in most pools. We removed it.
  • Flat $9.99/mo for commissioners. No per-pool fees, no per-participant fees, no upsells. One subscription covers unlimited pools for every PGA Tour event. Cancel anytime.
  • Live leaderboards that work. The page updates automatically as the tournament plays out, projected earnings shift with every position change. The group chat lights up the moment a sleeper jumps from T20 to T8.

What we believe

The best pools become traditions. The same group, the same tournament weekend, the same running joke about whoever picked the player who shot 81 on Thursday. We build for traditions, not transactions. That's why the commissioner subscription is flat monthly instead of per-pool, why participation is free, and why the leaderboard is designed to keep people invested through Sunday afternoon.

Simple beats configurable. Most pool tools let you toggle 40 settings and end up with something nobody understands. We pick sensible defaults (5 picks per person, tiered draft, prize money scoring, Thursday tee-off deadline) and let you skip the configuration. You can customize, but the defaults are what we'd use for our own pool.

The leaderboard is the product. Everything else, the picks page, the admin panel, the email reminders, exists to get people to the live leaderboard on Sunday afternoon and make that moment dramatic.

Who built it

golfpools.co is a solo project, built by a golf fan who got tired of watching his friend lose Saturdays to spreadsheet maintenance every Masters. No office, no sales team, no marketing department. If you email support@golfpools.co, that's the same inbox that reads every feedback submission on the Help page.