Every year around Masters week, the same conversation happens in offices everywhere: "Are we doing a pool this year?" Someone volunteers, opens a spreadsheet, types out a list of players, and within five rounds gives up trying to update scores manually on a Tuesday at 4pm. This guide walks through how to run an office golf pool that actually works, without spreadsheets, without scoring errors, and without spending your Friday afternoon entering cuts and withdrawals.

What is an office golf pool?

A golf pool is a friendly competition where each participant picks a set of golfers from the tournament field. As the tournament plays out, each participant's "team" accumulates points (or prize money, depending on the format), and the team with the highest total at the end wins. Pools are popular for the four majors, Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open, The Open Championship, but they work for any PGA Tour event.

The appeal of an office pool over season-long fantasy golf is simplicity. You pick a roster once before Thursday tees off, then you watch. There's no weekly waiver wire, no roster management, no Sunday lineup decisions. You picked your guys; live with the choice. Four days later, someone wins.

The three most common pool formats

Before you can run a pool, you need to decide on the format. There are three that account for almost every office pool in the wild.

1. Tiered draft (the format we recommend)

Players are grouped into "tiers" based on world ranking or odds. Each participant picks one golfer from each tier. For example: one from the top 10, one from ranks 11-25, one from 26-50, one from 51-100. This format rewards balanced picks, you can't just stack the favorites because you have to spread your picks across the field.

Why it works for offices: it's simple enough for non-golfers to grasp, deep enough that the better-informed players have a real edge, and the tier structure naturally produces interesting Sunday leaderboards.

2. Stroke-total scoring

Pick four to six golfers. Add up their final stroke totals. Lowest combined total wins. Simple to explain, but it has two problems: missed cuts crater your team (a player shooting 78-77 and missing the cut counts as 155 strokes), and the leaderboard barely moves until Sunday afternoon.

3. Prize money scoring

Same picks, but instead of stroke totals you sum each golfer's actual or projected prize money. This is how the PGA Tour itself ranks performance, the leaderboard moves every round as projected payouts shift, and one breakout pick from your sleeper tier can vault you up the standings on Sunday. (This is the format we use by default. See why prize money scoring beats stroke totals for a deeper breakdown.)

Step-by-step: running your first pool

Step 1, Pick a tournament

For a first pool, choose a major. The field is well-known, the broadcast is on every TV, and you'll have the most people interested. The four majors in 2026:

Step 2, Set your format and tiers

Tiered draft works best for groups of 5-30 people. Build four to six tiers based on world ranking. The number of tiers determines how many picks each person makes (one from each tier). Four to six picks is the sweet spot, fewer than four feels boring, more than six feels like work.

Step 3, Share an invite link

Send the invite link to your group via email, Slack, or text. Each person clicks the link, makes their picks, and they're in. With golfpools.co, joining is always free, only the commissioner pays $9.99/month, which means there's zero friction for participants. No accounts, no credit cards, no app downloads. Just a link.

Step 4, Watch the leaderboard

Once the tournament starts, the leaderboard updates automatically. No spreadsheet formulas, no manual scoring, no chasing people for missed picks. Live projected earnings update every round. The group chat will start the moment your first pick makes a birdie.

Step 5, Decide on stakes (optional)

Most office pools are bragging-rights only, winner picks the lunch order, loser brings coffee for a week. Some groups put $10-20 per entry into a kitty with the winner taking most of it. Either way, keep stakes low enough that everyone can participate without thinking twice. The fun is in the competition, not the payout.

Common pitfalls to avoid

  • Don't score manually. Spreadsheets feel manageable at the start of round one. By Sunday morning they're a disaster, withdrawals, cuts, position changes, and pace-of-play issues all eat into the time you wanted to spend watching the tournament.
  • Don't set picks deadlines too early. Players love adjusting their picks the morning of round one based on tee times, weather, or last-minute news. A pre-Thursday-morning deadline is the sweet spot.
  • Don't over-engineer the scoring. Adding bonus points for eagles, made cuts, leads after round 2, etc. sounds fun until you have to explain the scoring to four different non-golfers on the same Wednesday afternoon. Keep it simple: pick golfers, watch the leaderboard.
  • Don't require accounts. Any friction at the "join" step kills participation. Look for a tool that lets people join with a single tap-the-link, make-picks, done flow.

Make it an annual tradition

The best office pools become annual traditions. The same group, the same Masters weekend, the same running joke about whoever picked the player who shot 81 on Thursday. The first pool is the hardest, once you have one under your belt, every future one is easier.

Ready to run yours? Start a pool on golfpools.co, setup takes under a minute, the link is free to share, and the leaderboard scores itself.