How To Win Golf Majors & Masters Pools: Strategy Tips And Advice

5 proven strategies for getting an edge in golf Majors and Masters pools, including advice and tips for tiers-based picking contests.

Golf’s biggest events are back, and so are your chances to win big in Masters and Majors pools. Whether entering a pool for a single tournament like The Masters or one that spans all four Majors, our tools and strategies are built to help you make smarter picks.

In this article, we’ll cover essential strategies for competing in golf Majors and Masters pools. You’ll also get a preview of how our Golf Majors & Masters Picks product helps you make data-driven decisions each step of the way.

Golf Majors & Masters Pools Overview

Over the next four months, the world’s best golfers will compete in the four Major tournaments. Many fans will join the action by entering pools—either for a single event like The Masters or for contests that span multiple Majors.

The most common format is tier-based. In these pools, you select one or more golfers from each of several predefined tiers. For example, a five-tier Masters pool may require one pick per tier, with scoring based on factors like:

• Prize money earned
• Final placement
• Strokes relative to par
• FedEx Cup points

Our product and the strategies in this article are designed for tier-based pools using any scoring system except individual hole scoring. Not all the advice here will apply if you’re in a salary cap format or a pool using hole-by-hole points.

Majors & Masters Pool Strategy: 5 Tips For Making Better Picks

Below, we lay out five data-driven strategies you should keep in mind as you decide which golfers to pick in tier-based Majors and Masters pools:

1. Know each golfer’s odds
2. Consider how your opponents will pick
3. Adjust your picks based on pool size
4. Understand your pool’s scoring system
5. Plan for future Majors (if you need to)

Existing and past PoolGenius subscribers will recognize the common themes here. Still, we’ll explain the particular quirks and details related to these specific types of pools, as well as golf pools in general.

1) Know Each Golfer’s Odds

Golf may feel unpredictable, with longshots frequently winning on tour. But that perception is misleading—it’s driven more by the large number of longshot entrants than their actual win probability.

When you compare top-ranked golfers to individual longer shots head-to-head, the top players beat lower-ranked ones more than 90% of the time. That reliability matters in pools.

While chasing lesser-known names who’ve won recently can be tempting, consistently picking golfers with better odds remains the most effective long-term approach.

To evaluate odds effectively, rely on trusted metrics like Strokes Gained and betting market data. Those data points should guide your selections whether you’re choosing from a single large group or multiple tiers.

Strokes Gained Example

To see the value of picking higher-ranked golfers within a tier, we analyzed the 2024 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Genesis Invitational, Arnold Palmer Invitational, and The Players Championship.

We grouped the top 60 golfers into six tiers of 10 based on Strokes Gained ratings, then compared the top and bottom golfers in each tier by pre-tournament betting odds.

The results were clear: golfers with the best odds in their tier were far more likely to post a top score—and much less likely to finish near the bottom. In fact, the worst-ranked golfer by odds within a tier was nearly three times more likely to deliver a bottom-three score than a top one.

Those poor scores are the type of results that can sink an entry in a pool, especially in a pool that penalizes you heavily if one of your picks misses the cut.

2) Consider How Your Opponents Will Pick

While taking the best golfers is a good starting strategy, many of your opponents are aware of that approach, too. So, the better golfers will typically be more popular picks in your pool.

To craft the best pick strategy, you also need to account for how your opponents are likely to make their picks.

After all, you can only win a pool when you get better scores than your opponents (or, in some cases, avoid worse scores when a popular golfer misses the cut).

In some cases, the best picks could be golfers with similar betting odds to win as the top golfer in their tier but with much lower expected pick popularity in your pool.

Those types of picks often entail a similar level of risk but provide a much higher potential reward since you’re getting more pick differentiation from your opponents.

The challenge is projecting pick popularity in your pool. In our Golf Majors & Masters Picks product, we first gather national pick popularity data for tier-based Majors pools. Then, we adapt it for your particular pool (based on the specific players in each tier, which you can customize) to uncover the most likely contrarian value advantages.

3) Adjust Your Picks Based on Pool Size

This advice is common to many sports pools, from NFL survivor pools to March Madness contests to golf.

You need to make sure that the picks you make for a Majors or Masters pool reflect an overall level of risk that makes sense based on the total number of entries in your pool.

Small Pool Strategy

It’s often a perfectly reasonable strategy in smaller Majors pools to stick with the top golfers, even if they are more popular picks.

This works because, in smaller pools, many golfers within each tier go unpicked entirely. That significantly lowers the number of golfer combinations your lineup needs to outperform.

Even if you limit your choices to just the top three golfers (based on betting market win odds) in each of the six tiers, you still have 720 possible pick combinations. That’s enough to create a differentiated lineup in a pool with only 20 to 30 entries.

In other words, you can build a competitive and relatively unique lineup without feeling pressured to gamble on longshots.

The key insight: to win a small pool, you rarely need to nail the top scorer in every tier. In many cases, getting just one or two of the best performers is enough, as long as your other picks post solid results relative to the rest of the field.

Medium-Sized Pool Strategy

As the size of your pool goes up, so does the likelihood that the top-performing golfer in each tier is selected by at least one other entry. That increases the chance that a few randomly great (and lucky) scores appear in the pool standings.

For a pool with 100 or 200 total entries, if you go too heavy on uniqueness and make mostly below-average picks (in terms of win odds), you will often get burned by some of your golfers scoring poorly.

At the same time, the average score needed to win should go up as the pool size increases, so you can’t play it totally safe.

In mid-sized pools, you should usually balance the best picks by win odds and a selection of contrarian value plays among golfers in the upper to middle part of a tier, whose win odds are significantly higher than their pick popularity.

This approach allows your entry to hit one or two of the tournament’s surprise performers while still playing the favorites in other tiers and not taking too much risk overall.

Large Pool Strategy

In large pools of hundreds or thousands of entries, the chance that some entries will hit on multiple unexpected top performers magnifies, and the expected score you will need to win becomes even more extreme.

As a result, mainly making popular picks with high win odds becomes detrimental.

Instead, consider a more boom-or-bust strategy—one that might flop in most tournaments but gives you a real shot to win in a chaotic Major where popular picks underperform. You can still mix in one or two higher-ranked golfers from a tier, but your entry should lean heavily toward unique value picks to stand out from the crowd.

In short, you want to create the opportunity to rocket up the leaderboard in Majors when several popular picks underperform and your rarely-picked golfer in the same tier simultaneously puts up a great score.

In a large pool, your expected win odds are low no matter how strategic your picks are—so you can’t worry about posting a bad score. Instead, your focus should be on creating the best possible upside scenarios, even if they’re unlikely to hit.

4) Understand Your Pool’s Scoring System

As noted in the introduction, Majors and Masters pools often come with a variety of scoring formats—each carrying its own strategic implications. To simplify things, you can start by breaking them into two basic groups:

• Place of finish, prize money won, and FedEx Points are all similar, even though the specific point calculations may differ. They all follow a similar structure: the winner earns the most, with a descending scale from there. In these formats, the emphasis should be on upside and a golfer’s odds to win.
• Individual hole scoring formats introduce more randomness—since a golfer who makes an eagle followed by two bogeys may have a different score than a golfer with three straight pars, even though their overall score is the same. (Just a reminder: our product does not currently support this scoring system.)

A few other scoring formats are worth exploring in more detail.

Stroke Scoring and Missed Cuts

Overall stroke scoring is fairly standard in Majors pools, but variations—especially around how missed cuts are handled—can significantly impact pick strategy.

• Some pools assign set “penalties” or fixed scores to golfers who miss the cut, which can be extremely punishing.
• Others give all cut golfers the worst scores from Saturday and Sunday.

In formats like these, the difference between a golfer who barely makes the cut and one who misses it can be greater than the gap between the tournament winner and someone 10 strokes behind.

As a result, in pools with severe missed cut penalties, it becomes more important to avoid golfers with blow-up potential than in formats based purely on prize money.

Excluding the Worst Scores

Some pools allow you to throw out one or more of your worst-scoring golfers, and this rule can significantly impact your approach to value and uniqueness.

For example, in a pool where you pick six golfers and all scores count, there’s more opportunity for differentiation—since every golfer contributes to your total. But if only your top four scores are counted, entries tend to overlap more, with the same high-performing golfers driving the results (and the busts being excluded).

In these Masters pools, prioritizing unique value picks becomes even more critical. A lesser-used golfer who posts a strong score can be a major differentiator when only a few scores actually count.

Additionally, this format gives you more flexibility to take risks. A high-upside pick that flops is less damaging if their score can be tossed out.

5) Plan for Future Majors (In Multi-Major Pools)

This advice applies only to pools that span multiple Majors and restrict you from using the same golfer more than once.

In these formats, your strategy should go beyond the current event. You’ll need to assess whether it’s better to use a top golfer now or save him for a future tournament where he might provide more strategic value.

Many entrants instinctively burn their favorite or highest-ranked picks early—especially at The Masters—which often leads to those golfers being overpicked in the early events. Saving them for later can give you a valuable contrarian edge.

With smart planning, you can still choose from the top 4–5 options in each tier while gaining leverage through lower pick popularity than the field.

Your Winning Edge for Majors & Masters Pools

Reading strategy advice is a great start—but building a winning lineup takes time, precision, and the right data. From analyzing betting odds and course history to forecasting pick popularity, there’s plenty to consider.

That’s exactly why we built the Golf Majors & Masters Picks tool: to simplify your decision-making and help you make smarter picks—faster.

Here’s what the tool provides:

• Custom advice for all your pools—from The Masters through The Open

• Support for both single and multi-Major formats

• A sortable Data Grid with betting odds, Strokes Gained stats, and golfer rankings

• Tier-by-tier breakdowns tailored to your pool’s format, size, and rules

Whether you’re a data-driven player or just want quick, high-confidence picks, this tool is designed to help you make better decisions—and win more often.

PoolGenius subscribers in other formats win prizes about 3x as often as expected based on pool size and structure.

We’re now bringing that same edge to golf—and after just one year, 45% of our Majors & Masters subscribers reported winning a prize in at least one of their pools.

P.S. If you also play in Golf One and Done pools, check out our Golf One and Done Picks product—or save with a discounted bundle that includes both tools.