Hey—a few people have asked how we run the world’s most complicated fantasy league. Be careful what you wish for…these are the league’s official rules for the 2016 season. It might be easier just to read Moby Dick.
NOTE: Gotta mention this up top. A member of our league, affectionately known as Cellraiser, has created a brilliant spreadsheet that actually links up to an online scoreboard and updates scores, points, and standings automatically. I have no idea how it works, but I do know that without it, running this league would be impossible (or at least wayyyy more time-consuming). I don’t want to sound discouraging, but the spreadsheet allows us to track how we’re doing minute by minute, and saves so much leg work, that it’s hard to imagine how any of this would work or be any fun without it.
THE RULES: 2016 EDITION
Scoring: Each week, by Wednesday at midnight, every team will set its roster on the official spreadsheet. This is a simple process: Activate seven players from a roster of ten that will be eligible to score that week (there are active, inactive, and bench spots on the pool spreadsheet that are easy to operate). Of a team’s seven active golfers, the four best scores will count each week. The combined score of the four players when the tournament is over is that team’s score for that week. So if your final four is Spieth (-2), Rory (-5), Fowler (-7), and Day (-10), your score for the week is -24. Great work! And great job with the draft.
At the end of each week’s tournament, we’ll have a final leaderboard. Your points for that week will be assigned based on your finish. For a normal PGA Tour event, the points will go from 12 (first place) to 1 (last place). For the Players Championship, it will go from 24 points (first place) to 2 points (last place). For the majors, it will go from 36 points (first place) to 3 points (last place). Each week, there will also be a bonus for a team win, either 2 points (regular event), 4 points (Players), or 6 points (major). In weeks with a WGC event, the scoreboard will be divided, and the WGC event will go from 18 points down to 1.5, while the concurrent Off-WGC PGA Tour event will go from 6 down to 0.5. Team winner bonuses will be 3 points for a WGC, and 1 point for the Off-WGC event.
Points accumulate throughout the season, and the three teams with the most points make the podium, while the winner earns the title of regular season champion and takes home the St. Andrews Quaich—the most coveted prize in the league.
Cut Penalty: If you don’t have at least four players make the cut on a given weekend, your score for those empty spots will be the worst final score in the field among players who did make the cut, plus a five-stroke penalty. If you don’t have seven players eligible for a tournament, that’s fine, you’ll just have to start your best six (or five, or four) and ride with them. If you don’t have four players starting a tournament, your fourth (nonexistent) player gets that same penalty. To add and/or bench players on a week-to-week basis, see the “Waiver Wire” and “Bench” sections.
MDF Penalty: If one or more of your top four players falls prey to the secondary cut (MDF = made cut, did not finish), the penalty is the highest final score among any player who made the cut, plus two penalty strokes.
Withdrawals: If a player withdraws at any point before his second round begins (note that this includes Friday morning, unlike last year), you have a one-time free pass to substitute a new player from the inactive spots on your roster (players on the bench are not eligible). If the player withdraws after he has started his second round, it’s like getting cut, no substitutes allowed.
Ties: In the case of a tie in the standings, points will be split between the teams tied, the same way prize money would be split in a normal event.
Player Win Bonus: Along with the bonus for earning a team win (+2, +4, or +6, depending on the tournament), there will be an individual champion bonus. If a player on your active roster wins a tournament, you get a bonus—+2 in a normal event, +4 at the Players Championship, or +6 at a major—along with 3 points at a WGC event, and 1 point at the Off-WGC PGA Tour events.
Player Top Three Bonus: We’ll be rewarding teams with player who finish in the top three. One point in a normal event, two at the Players, three at a major—along with 1.5 at a WGC, and 0.5 at a PGA Tour events opposite a WGC. Ties included.
Points diagram:
| Team no. 1 Points | Team no. 12 Points | Team Winner Bonus | Player Winner Bonus | Player Top-3Bonus | |
| Major | 36 | 3 | 6 | 6 | 3 |
| Players | 24 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 2 |
| WGC | 18 | 1.5 | 3 | 3 | 1.5 |
| Regular | 12 | 1 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Off-WGC | 6 | 0.5 | 1 | 1 | 0.5 |
Combination Weeks: When WGC events occur simultaneously with off-WGC PGA Tour events, each team’s roster will be 12-strong, as the two bench spots will be opened up and made active for the week. It is up to each team how they want to load the roster, but in the WGC events, there are no cuts, so as long as a team starts four players, they won’t suffer a penalty. In the Off-WGC event, only the top three players will count toward the team’s score, rather than the top four. A cut penalty will apply. Because the benches are open for these events, two-week waiting periods are waived, and teams will reset their benches after the event, at which point the two-week waiting period begins anew (see bench rules below).
Special Events: Occasionally, throughout the year, there are non-standard events. The rules for those events will be clarified here.
The WGC Match Play Championship:
1. Every golfer, regardless of how far they advance, gets 1 point for each round robin victory.
2. Golfers who make the Sweet 16 and are eliminated get 2 points.
3. Golfers who make the Elite 8 and are eliminated get 4 points.
4. The golfer who finishes fourth gets 8 points
5. The golfer who finishes third (there’s a consolation match) gets 10 points.
7. The golfer who finishes second gets 13 points.
8. The champion gets 16 points.
9. Note that a golfer doesn’t accumulate points as he advances. So the champion will get 16 points ONLY, not 2+4+8+16. This is for balance.
10. As usual, you can have up to seven golfers in the field, but only your top 4 count.
11. Each team’s points will be tallied, and then we’ll assign scoreboard points in order from 18 down to 1.5, like a normal WGC.
12. The usual team and player bonuses apply.
13. A player who loses all 3 group stage matches gets a -1 penalty. Same goes for any team with fewer than four players…-1 for each open spot. This is a substitute for the cut penalty.
The Olympics
This is an Olympic year, and the Rio tournament runs simultaneously with the John Deere Classic, which is a normal PGA Tour event. The scoring for the Olympic games will go as follows:
Gold Medal: Team with the gold medalist is awarded 15 points
Silver Medal: Team with the silver medalist is awarded 10 points
Bronze Medal: Team with the bronze medalist is awarded 5 points
The catch here is that the player must be on your roster in one of the seven active spots, which of course takes one player away from the John Deere lineup. Not coincidentally, the John Deere also hosts the semifinals of the PGA Cup in 2016.
Draft: A live draft, held in an online chat room, will determine the initial rosters of all 12 teams. The draft order will be randomized (this is set to change in 2017, when a yet-to-be-determined weighted system will be employed). Any team that can’t send at least one representative to the draft may submit a preference list. A team that has no representative and no preference list will automatically draft the highest available player from the 2014-15 PGA Tour money list. Each team will draft ten players, leaving two bench spots open. At the draft, each team will have one minute to make a selection, at which point, if no selection is made, the team will again receive the highest available player from the 2014-15 PGA Tour money list.
Playoffs: The “regular season” will end after the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro in late August. That gives us about 30+ events in 29 weeks, three WGC events, and all four majors. The playoffs will be the same as the playoffs on the PGA Tour- the FedEx Cup. The eight top players in the standings will advance to the quarterfinals (the Barclays), the top four that week will move on to the semifinals (Deutsche Bank), and the two best will square off in the BMW Championship for the title. In the playoffs, there will be no team or player win bonuses—only the head-to-head score counts. For the Barclays and Deustche bank, the best four players will count as usual, but in the BMW Championship, due to the smaller field, each team will start a maximum of six players, and only the top three will count.
Playoff Ties: The highest individual player determines the winner. If this is also a tie, the second-highest player
The Waiver Wire: You may find that you need an extra player for a certain tournament, or just that there’s a hot player that’s not on a roster, and you’d like him to be on your roster. You have all day Monday to email me (or the acting commish, whoever it may be) the player you want to pick up. The waiver order for week one will be the reverse order of the draft. When you make a waiver acquisition on Monday, you go to the bottom of the list. The waiver order will apply only to Monday transactions. Once Tuesday rolls around, transactions work on a first come, first served basis, until the waiver wire closes Wednesday at midnight. Transactions on Tuesday or Wednesday don’t affect your standing on the following week’s waiver wire. If you add someone from the waiver wire, this obviously means you have to drop someone from your roster, who then becomes free game for others. You must note the player you’ll be dropping or benching in your request email to the commissioner.
Example Request:
1. Add Michael Putnam, drop Rory McIlroy
2. Add David Lingmerth, bench Jordan Spieth
The Bench: You have two bench spots. This is your 11th and 12th roster spot, and you can move a player there at any point. This is one way to clear a roster spot for someone you pick up off waivers. However, there is a bench penalty—once you bench a player, he is sidelined for two weeks. That’s two tournaments before you can move him back to your regular roster. You can still drop the bench player at any point into the waiver pool, but you can’t put him back on your own roster until the bench period is over. As with all other transactions, you can only bench a player officially Monday through Wednesday. (See the bench exception above in the “Combination Weeks” section.)
Clarification on the Bench Rule: Additionally, you can’t acquire a player from the free agent/waiver field without an open, non-bench roster spot. In other words, if you want to pick up Anthony Kim, but your roster is full of 10 golfers, you can’t simply take Kim and stick him on the bench. You can move someone from your roster to the bench and then add Kim, but the bench doesn’t count as an “open” roster spot for free agents.
The Keeper Bench Spot: If you want to keep a player who has spent at least eight weeks on your roster, you may use a one-time only keeper bench spot to free up roster space without releasing the player. Effectively, this is your 13th bench spot. This sidelines the player permanently, with no exceptions, for the rest of the season. It also locks him in as a keeper for the following season, which comes with obvious risks in terms of offseason injuries or other acts of fate.
The Keeper Rule (New for 2016): You may keep up to two players each year, under the following circumstances:
1. The player was not drafted in the first three rounds.
AND
2. EITHER
The player was drafted by your team, and finished the year on your roster (it doesn’t matter if the player was off the team at any point).OR
In order to keep a player, you will sacrifice the same pick in your draft from the round in which the player was originally selected. If a player was a fifth-round pick, for example, he will count as your fifth-round pick the following year, when you keep him. If you decide to keep a player that wasn’t drafted the previous year, that will count as your tenth-round pick.
If you want to keep two players who were drafted in the same round, you will sacrifice your pick for that round and the round above. Example: Both of your keepers were drafted in the fourth round in 2016. They will count as your picks for the third and fourth rounds in 2017. If you want to keep a player for a second consecutive year, the round of the pick that you sacrifice will go up by one. It will continue going up by one round each year, until the sacrificed pick reaches the second round, at which point the player goes back to the general pool. You can never sacrifice a second-round pick for a keeper. (Note: If a team keeps two fourth-round picks one year, sacrificing the third and fourth pick, they cannot keep both picks the following year, since it would require giving up a second-round pick.)
Keepers must be locked in a week before the draft with the league commissioner. These keepers will be announced to the league immediately, and during the ensuing week, both picks and keepers can be traded between teams.
Trades: Trades are permitted. They can be 1-for-1 or multi-player deals. The trades can be imbalanced numbers-wise, with 3-for-1-type deals. Be aware, though, that if you’re the team receiving more players, you may also have to drop or bench players to make room on your roster. Like the waiver wire, trades must take place Monday-Wednesday. Obviously you’re free to discuss them at any point, but they can only be executed on non-golf days. To ensure people trade in good faith, we have a 7/12 approval system. If six teams feel the trade is imbalanced or shady, it gets rejected. The length of the review period is not defined, and in extreme cases—for example, a Wednesday 11 p.m. transaction—a trade can be frozen in order to hold a vote. In cases like these, if a trade is approved, the teams can retroactively start the players for that week’s tournament, even if the tournament is already underway. Note that this has never happened in league history.
Trade Deadline: The Wednesday of the PGA Championship week is the final day before the midnight trade deadline. Afterward, you may still acquire and drop players, but any players dropped from any roster will not be eligible to be acquired by another team for the rest of the season. In other words, the acquisition pool is reduced to players that were not on any roster after that Wednesday.
Initial Waiver: After we draft, there will be no waiver activity before the first event. We’ll start up the first waiver wire, based on reverse draft order, on the Monday following the first tournament.
Roster Note: If you fail to set your roster before the players tee off on Thursday, it works just like any computerized fantasy league—
Money Payout: We have $1,800 total, so here’s how it’ll look:
$450 – Regular Season champion
$300 – Regular season second place
$150 – Regular season third place
$300 – Playoff champion
$150 – Playoff second place
$300 – PGA Cup winner
$150 – PGA Cup finalist
Democratic Socialist Tax, aka The Bernie Sanders Fine: If either the regular season champ, the regular season runner-up, the playoff champ, or the PGA Cup winner also wins another $300 prize, we’re taxing them at a rate of 50% for all money earned over $300 (or over $450 for the regular season champion). The taxed money will go in $75 increments, as available, to a team that has not won any other money, using this priority order: Regular season fourth place, playoffs third place, PGA Cup third place, regular season fifth place, playoffs fourth place, PGA Cup fourth place.
Cheaters: Anyone caught cheating forfeits their entry fee and will be booted from the pool.
THE PGA CUP: Back for a second year by popular demand, we will be holding a year-long Cup competition that runs during the season, to add some head-to-head spice while we’re competing in the the normal rotisserie style race for the league title and the elimination playoffs. The PGA Cup will be contested during normal golf weeks, where normal points are earned. It just happens that in a given week, you’ll also be matched up against another team in a year-long Cup competition. The format:
1. All 12 teams get placed into 3 random groups of teams. The first 3 weeks of the PGA Cup will feature round robin matches within the group, with all teams within the group squaring off once.
2. Based on the way the groups finish, every team is then re-sorted into three new groups.
Group A: Three first place-finishers in the groups, plus the best runner-up.
Group B: Two other runners-up plus the two best third-place finishers.
Group C: Last third place, all fourth-placers.
Again, there will be three weeks of round robin matches within the groups to sort out positions.
3. The bracket. The format for the Cup bracket can be viewed below. The basic gist is that ten teams make the bracket, but there are huge advantages for the best finishers in the best groups. The notation is easy: A1 = first place finisher in group A from the second round, C2 = second place in group C, etc.
There will be 11 weeks of Cup matches. The featured tournaments will be (playoffs in italics):
Northern Trust Open, Valspar Championship, Houston Open, RBC Heritage, Zurich Classic, Byron Nelson, Memorial, Quicken Loans National, Canadian Open, John Deere Classic, Barclays.
Here’s the bracket:
The Hunt for the Quaich begins at the Phoenix Open. Good luck,
—Shane
Friends of Tiger, SEASON TWO! Episode 2.01 — Luke Kerr-Dineen of USA Today
2016 IS HERE! After the longest hiatus in podcast history, Friends of Tiger is back! And who else would kick off our second season but the man with the most appearances in podcast history, For The Win’s Luke Kerr-Dineen! Luke and I are on the eve of our fantasy golf draft, and we’re struggling over the hard questions: Rory or Jordan with the first pick? Is Day a legit third pick, or is he going to fade? Who are the sleepers that might slip to the later rounds? We scope out the world of professional golf, from the high-flyers to the grinders to the question marks, and preview the year to come. It’s always SUCH A PLEASURE to jam with Luke, and he even earned an official Friends of Tiger nickname. But how are you ever going to know what it is unless you listen?!?!! DO IT!!!
For more stories from the PGA Tour, order my book, Slaying the Tiger, here.
We’re on iTunes now, mister. Subscribe to ‘Friends of Tiger’ here.
Golf will be ruined if players are allowed to wear shorts
It was a busy weekend for golf, with Rickie Fowler winning at Abu Dhabi and Jason Dufner coming through at La Quinta. But I don’t want to talk about those men, or their silly little victories. Instead, I want to address the absolute unforgivable outrage that transpired before tournament play even began. Maybe you’ve heard the shocking news already—at the Abu Dhabi pro-am on Wednesday, golfers were allowed to wear shorts.
Yes, you read that right. No, this isn’t the latest script for “Space Wars,” or whatever trashy blockbuster film is playing at your local nickelodeon. This is real life, and Shorts-Gate is the latest bright idea from that oh-so-special class of self-adoring wunderkinds that call themselves “millennials.” It’s true: Professional golfers, who are supposed to be role models for the rich children of America, were flouncing around in the United Arab Emirates wearing short pants.
Now, I don’t consider myself a “sensitive” soul. I don’t have a closet full of participation trophies, and I don’t go around spouting PC terms like “privilege” and “micro-aggressions” and “free elections.” Most people who know me will tell you that I’m a hard-boiled man’s man in the tradition of John Wayne and Dennis Kucinich. But I’m not ashamed to admit that the minute I heard this news, I fell to the floor in tears, started moaning, blacked out, and woke up seven hours later in a Costco parking lot surrounded by empty gasoline cans and a loyal sidekick who referred to me as “Professor Fuego.”
Truth is, I haven’t seen anything this offensive since Elvis Presley was swirling his hips for packs of screaming girls. At least the TV execs in those days had the good sense to film him from the waist up and spare the nation a disgusting carnal exhibition. But then, those execs belonged to the greatest generation. No such restraint was shown in Abu Dhabi, where the ghoulish white gams of cultural terrorists like Ian Poulter were on naked display.Literally. Tradition was snubbed, and our great golf heroes—men like Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, and Gary Player—must have been rolling in their graves.
Call me old-fashioned, but this is just plain immoral. GOLF IS MEANT TO BE PLAYED IN PANTS. It’s always been played that way, going back to the day it was first invented by a group of stockbrokers in Augusta, GA. And I’ll tell you something else: Just like flavored soda water, shorts are a gateway drug. They will lead to swift ruin for our beloved sport, in a nightmarish chain-reaction that we’re powerless to stop. Here are 30 dark visions that will come true within the next decade unless we nip this dangerous shorts craze in its lewd, wanton, libidinous bud.
1. Golfers begin to wear pajamas. And stocking caps. And those little candle-holder things.
2. Golfers move on to capri pants. (I have it on good authority that Puma has 1,000 orange pairs ready for Fowler to wear, along with tie-dye tank tops and propellor beanie hats, the minute they think they can sneak it past the censors.)
3. Golfers use self-ambulatory robotic legs to save themselves the effort of walking.
4. Golfers have their entire lower bodies surgically altered into golf carts, so that they’re technically “walking” even as they roll down the fairway.
5. Post-surgery golfers legally change their names to golf cart-themed puns, like Kartin’ Kaymer or Patrick Speed or Seung-Yul-Go.
6. Golfers wear bibs. Not caddie bibs, but tiny baby bibs, with embroidered messages like, “I <3 mommy.”
7. Golfers becoming very sloppy eaters, because hey, what the hell, I got this sweet bib, duuuuude.
8. Golfers experiment with foreign clothing items like togas, kaftans, and Canadian denim.
9. Golfers wear those “I’m with stupid!” t-shirts, and run around for hours at a time trying to set up the perfect prank photo. Entire tournaments are canceled when they forget to tee off.
10. Golfers bring back the edgy slogan-based t-shirts of the ’90s that nearly ruined this country, including “And 1” and “No Fear” and “Big Dogs” and even “Big Johnson.”
11. A pestilence visits the earth. Golfers wear head-to-toe aluminum foil to reflect the sun.
12. The angry sun god retaliates by frying out America’s golf courses, which will necessitate millions of gallons of additional water, which will drain the oceans, which will anger the sea god, who will flood the courses until they’re green again, which will anger the grass god, who will make the greens spotty and bumpy and totally unplayable, which will anger the Chambers Bay groundskeepers, who will be like, “hey, grass god, that was kind of our thing.”
13. Golfers use giant golf balls that can’t even fit in the hole in order to overcome the shoddy greens.
14. The PGA Tour adapts to the giant balls by making giant holes, which quickly fill up with alligators that develop a taste for volunteer marshals who wander from their stations, so that when a ball goes in the hole, you can hear the sickening crunch of bones from their skeletons.
15. With death surrounding them, golfers give in to nonconformist urges and surf in the water hazards. (“Hang ten” used to be a bad thing in golf, AM I RIGHT FOLKS?) Also, they sunbathe in the sand traps. Why not, they’ve already got the shorts!
16. Morals decay further. Golfers drink flavored soda water in front of impressionable kids.
17. The kids become so corrupt that Augusta National chairman Billy Payne is forced to learn to skateboard in order to keep up with trends. One day, out of control, he crashes into the lever that opens the subterranean cage where the captive birds and squirrels are held. Hungry and maddened, they storm the course and attack the first golfer they find, which turns out to be Kartin’ Kaymer, who can’t escape because his surgically altered golf cart body stalls out on a big hill.
18. Kartin’ Kaymer survives, but becomes so disfigured that he has to wear a Phantom of the Opera mask, and transforms into a supervillain named “Spartan Crimer.”
19. In the meantime, metal clubs become legal. (Note: My editor tells me this has already happened, which is just more proof that I’m on the right track.)
20. Indoor golf explodes outside of South Korea.
21. Golfers begin disappearing, one by one, and nobody knows why. First Spieth, then Fowler, then McIlroy.
22. “This is a great shame,” says Spartan Crimer, with a thin smile. “Who would commit such an act?”
23. While governing bodies are distracted by the disappearances, the peasant laborers—I mean caddies—are allowed the basic legal right to choose which companies and products they’d like to endorse.
24. Billy Payne, still trying to skateboard, crashes into another lever. In another subterranean prison, a door opens, and Spieth, Fowler, and McIlroy rush to freedom.
25. But their time underground has changed them. In the glaring light of the “real world,” they understand what Martin Crimer was trying to teach them about the beauty of the darkness. They decide to become supervillains, and rename themselves Sword-in-Sheath, Trickie Howler, and Gory Jackal-Boy.
26. The four supervillains invent a new putting technique that allows golfers to avoid the pitfalls of a free swing by lodging the club against a separate body part for stability. They name it “ballasting.”
27. “Ballasting” ruins golf.
28. People marry box turtles.
29. Zach Johnson says a bad word.
30. Team USA wins the Ryder Cup.
I’m sorry if any of this disturbed you, but we need to act quickly. Stop the shorts. Stop them now.
I am America.
I am Professor Fuego.