5 Strategy Tips to Win Your Golf One And Done Pool

Want to win your PGA golf One And Done pool? Make smarter picks by incorporating these strategy tips with data-driven advice.

by Jason Lisk - Dec 31, 2025

Golf One and Done pools are basically season-long investments, and a great way to engage and enjoy the sport on a weekly basis. You get one share of every golfer, and one pick in each tournament, and you’re trying to spend those shares when the payout is worth it.

The latest PGA season has reminded us of one important thing: when you use a star in One and Done pools matters almost as much as which star you choose. After all, Rory finally got his Masters green jacket. Scottie Scheffler went on a dominant run and won two majors. One of those wins came at a course many considered a weak spot for him.

The One and Done format demands foresight, flexibility, and a big touch of luck—qualities that make every pick and tournament a potentially pivotal moment in the season-long journey.

Golf One and Done Pool Basics

A Golf One and Done pool operates much like an NFL survivor pool but with a distinctive twist. Participants select one PGA golfer for each tournament, with the catch that each golfer can only be used once per season. This constraint requires careful planning to determine when to “burn” top players while leaving room for later opportunities.

Golf One and Done pools are more forgiving than survivor pools, where a single misstep can lead to elimination. Even if some picks underperform, a few big wins can propel you to victory. The challenge lies in navigating golf’s inherent unpredictability, where even the strongest players often have modest chances of winning any tournament.

Success in this format depends on blending strategic decisions with the patience to endure setbacks and the foresight to capitalize on key opportunities. While luck will always play a role, a sound strategy can significantly increase your chances of coming out on top at the end of a long PGA season.

Tips for Golf One and Done Picks

• Know Your Specific Pool Rules
• Understand What Wins Golf One and Done Pools
• Save the Best Golfers for the Biggest Purse Events
• Adjust Strategy Based on Standings
• Stay Engaged and Do Not Surrender

With the right approach, you can turn the ups and downs of the PGA season into a rewarding journey. The better your strategy, the less you’ll rely on luck to claim victory.

1) Know Your Specific One and Done Pool Rules

The standard “One and Done” Pool requires players to pick one golfer each tournament and limits you to picking each golfer once per season. But there are a lot of variations, and all of them can impact your strategy. Some potential variations include:

• The specific tournaments included
• The scoring format used
• Whether some tournaments require more than one pick
• Whether some golfers can be reused
• The number of prize payout spots or percentage of pool that gets paid out
• Rules on substituting or replacing golfers who withdraw
• Whether there are season segments that have their own prize structure

Based on our research, many One and Done pools start in January and early February, and most continue through the FedEx Cup Playoffs. However, there is plenty of variability in which tournament they begin with and whether they include the final TOUR Championship event (since it has a unique prize structure).

The exact number of tournaments included in your pool and how many players you have to pick in total over the length of the contest can significantly impact your ideal pick strategy.

The most common scoring format uses the prize purse money won by the golfer in that event for the score, but there are also variations on that theme that might cause you to approach your pick-making at least somewhat differently.

2) Understand What Wins One and Done Pools

In the typical Golf One and Done Pool that uses prize money won as the scoring metric, picking golfers who win tournaments is key. Let’s take a look at the prize purse payouts for The Masters in 2025 as an example:

• 1st – Rory McIlroy: $4,200,000
• 2nd – Justin Rose: $2,268,000
• 3rd – Patrick Reed: $1,428,000
• 4th – Scottie Scheffler: $1,008,000
• 5th (tie) – Sung-Jae Im and Bryson DeChambeau: $798,000 each
• 7th – Ludvig Aberg: $703,500
• 8th (tie) – Xander Schauffele, Zach Johnson, Corey Conners, and Jason Day: $588,000

In terms of prize money, the difference between finishing in first place and tied for third place was greater than the difference between second place and someone who missed the cut.

That’s where our One and Done Product comes in. It will show you the betting market odds to win the tournament for each golfer and let you track your entries to see how much each golfer has won automatically once you tell us which golfer you picked for each event.

Analyzing Top-Performing vs. Average Entries

We scrutinized the top-performing entries with average scores in a prominent national One and Done Contest from 2025. If you looked at a typical week, you might not be able to tell them apart, and you certainly couldn’t do so in their worst weeks.

• On average, the top entries missed the cut in 3.8 tournaments, while the average finishing entries missed the cut in 4.6 tournaments.

The difference was at the top, in a handful of tournaments. The top entries had a week where they earned more than $1 million in prize money 5.7 times, compared to 1.7 times for the average entries.

• The top entries averaged 3.7 tournament winners; the average entries only 0.3 (so one-third of them picked one winner and two-thirds had none).

About 65% of the points for a top-finishing entry came from their best five events for the season, and 96% of the points came from the upper half of outcomes.

The top entries averaged a stretch of at least 4+ tournaments consecutively, during which they never earned more than $200,000 with a golfer. The difference was in the handful of events they did hit big in.

In short, hitting tournament winners and other high-value top results wins One and Done pools—it’s a home run game. Avoiding players who miss cuts? Not so much. That happens to winners and losers alike.

3) Save the Best Golfers for the Biggest Purse Events

So how do you give yourself the best chance to win big purses? For starters, use the best golfers in events where they have the potential to win the most money.

Although One and Done pools typically necessitate making picks across 30 or more tournaments, it’s essential to recognize that not all tournaments are equal in prestige and prize purses.

About half (or more) of tournaments in a typical One and Done will have significantly lower prize purses. The biggest purse events (e.g. the Majors, The Players Championship, what the PGA Tour calls “Signature Events,” and the FedEx Playoff Tournaments) have much larger prizes for first place than other tournaments.

2025 purse reality check: The Players Championship again led Tour-run events at $25M total purse (winner $4.5M). The Masters paid $21M in total, and $4.2 million; other majors hovered in the high-teens; Signature events stayed around $20M. Those top tiers are where your “one-use” elites belong to give you the best chance to hit winners that matter.

Picking a golfer who wins one of those higher-value events can be worth more than double the value of choosing the winner in another event. Getting a 2nd or 3rd-place finisher can also be worth more than picking a tournament winner in a lower-value tournament.

Maximizing High-Purse Events With Golf One and Done Tools

Our Golf One and Done product provides several tools to help you make your decisions to maximize this. Those include:

• Tournament Summary: tells you where that event ranks (relative to all remaining events that you tell us are used in your pool) in terms of prize money.
• Data Grid: for each tournament that shows our “Strokes Gained” rank for each golfer, along with other data, like their betting odds to win, course history and recent performances.
• Pick Grades: based on the value of the tournament, the golfer’s relative rank compared to where the tournament ranks, and the odds to win.
• Season Planner Tool: provides an overview of the remaining tournaments, organized into tiers based on our golfer rankings.

Why Matching Golfer Quality Matters

Think of competing in a One and Done Pool as trying to do well on two different dimensions. First, you want to get more points than your opponents in that particular tournament. Second, especially for the top golfers, you want to get more points when you use that specific golfer than your opponents do when they use the same golfer in a different tournament.

Those goals can sometimes conflict, and you are forced to prioritize one. With 30+ golfers to pick from, you cannot take the best option each week.

In plenty of weeks, you have to pick a golfer who is not the favorite, hoping for an outlier result. To minimize the downside, you also want to concentrate those picks on the lowest downside: the lower-money events, where the difference between finishing well and poorly is reduced.

Conversely, choosing a top-performing golfer in an event with a capped maximum earning, such as $1.4 million to first place, often results in an automatic disadvantage. In this scenario, you are inherently conceding points to a pool segment that selects the same golfer in a different, potentially more lucrative tournament.

Scottie Scheffler 2025 Example

Let’s use the example of picks on Scottie Scheffler in the 2025 PGA season.

Scheffler won five different tournament events, finished in the top three in three others, and in the top five in two more. So, he finished highly in multiple tournaments. Not all those finishes were equally beneficial to One and Done players.

Here was the prize money he won in all top-five finishes up through the BMW Championship in 2025:

Tournament	Finish	Money Won
PGA Championship	1	$3,420,000
The Open Championship	1	$3,100,000
The Memorial	1	$4,000,000
BMW Championship	1	$3,600,000
CJ Cup Byron Nelson	1	$1,782,000
Houston Open	T2	$845,500
Genesis Invitational	T3	$1,200,000
FedEx St. Jude	T3	$1,160,000
Masters	4	$1,008,000
Charles Schwab	T4	$427,500

You would have gotten the most points at The Memorial and the BMW Championship, but got a similar amount in the two major wins at the PGA Championship and The Open. But after that, the drop-off was significant.

Scheffler’s second-place finish at the Houston Open — a very good result — was worth a fraction of what he earned with those other wins. It was less than his top 5 finishes at the bigger purse events as well.

If you used Scheffler at the Byron Nelson, Houston Open, or Charles Schwab, you would have a really good result, but it would probably cost you your overall odds of winning your One and Done. Between his four big wins, close to half your pool would have made over $3 million when they used him.

You don’t want to limit your upside with the best golfers by using them in events where their winnings are capped at lower amounts, even if it’s tempting to do so when they are heavier favorites against weaker fields.

4) Adjust Your Strategy to the Standings As The End Game Nears

Because One and Done pools are heavily influenced by hitting tournament winners, and because you are competing in a pool against others, you always need to think about how your opponents are likely to behave.

You shouldn’t obsess about this early on in the pool as much, though. The top golfers in a given week will likely have higher popularity, but it’s all relative. There are more options to pick from in a Golf One and Done pool than in an NFL survivor pool, for instance, so you are less likely to see something like 40% of your pool’s picks concentrated on one specific choice (which does happen in NFL survivor pools).

Looking over the 2024 and 2025 pick data, we did not have an individual golfer with a popularity over 20% in most tournaments, and those that did had a popular one tended to top out below 30%. It was pretty rare to get higher than that.

With so many tournaments and so many players to consider, the odds of your picks exactly duplicating an opponent’s entry over most of the season are slim. Entries will have natural variation, even if taking semi-popular options regularly.

Playing From Ahead vs. Playing From Behind

As you get deeper into the PGA season, you need to think about how overall pick popularity in your pool will go. If you are in a leading position, a more popular pick can keep you in front of a larger pool segment.

If you find yourself trailing in your pool’s leaderboard, on the other hand, you may need to pick a winner that few others will choose, giving yourself the chance to make a last-minute leap in the pool standings if the popular picks struggle and your pick hits.

In our Golf One And Done Picks, we estimate pick popularity based on data we are receiving from pool hosting sites and projections based on how picks have been made in the past. You can then use that information as part of your pick strategy when evaluating the golfers.

The LIV Player Example

LIV Golf players present a unique dynamic in One and Done pools. Due to their limited appearances on One and Done schedules, they’ll be a strong focus in Major tournaments, likely becoming highly popular picks. This creates both opportunities and challenges.

Whether you consider them your picks depends on your place in the pool standings. If you are trailing your pool’s leaders by a large margin, it may make more sense to fade the popular option and hope they do not win the event. But if you need to select a winner to rise in the standings, the opposite is true, as there are only limited opportunities to pick some of the best golfers in the world.

DeChambeau was a popular pick at the 2024 U.S. Open and went on to win the tournament. The most significant value he added to a One and Done lineup was that tournament, and he was only available to use a few times last season. Those who picked him at that U.S. Open would have risen on the leaderboard in their specific contests. It was similar in 2025, when his 2nd-place finish at the PGA Championship was both a popular pick and highly valuable in most One and Done pools.

When To Think About Strategy Adjustments

The optimal time to adjust your strategy to avoid or select popular options when available depends on the entry. Things like the distance behind a prize position, the number of big events left, and how many others in your pool still have a certain golfer to pick all play a role.

That said, Memorial Day is probably a pretty good time to assess where you stand and consider any strategy shifts. The stretch of big June events that starts with The Memorial, followed two weeks later by the U.S. Open, and then the Travelers Championship, comprises three of the bigger-money events.

Once those tourneys have passed, most One and Done Pools will be down to The Open and the two FedEx Playoff events as the only remaining big-money events, and 80% of the big-purse events will be completed.

5) Do Not Surrender

Finally, what is possibly the most essential advice in One and Done Pools: Don’t surrender when holes are left to play.

There’s a saying in sports that the best ability is availability. The corollary to one-and-done pools is that the best ability is simply showing up each week to make a pick.

Looking through historical One and Done pool pick data, we are astounded by the number of entries that fail to get picks in. Either that, or they give up when early results do not go their way. It’s not an insignificant number, and players who exhibit such behavior make contests +EV if you stay the course.

In one pool we analyzed, about 10% of the starting entries did not make a pick in the tournament by the halfway point of the schedule!

Have a Routine

Unlike NFL survivor pools, where you can get eliminated by a single unlucky play, in One and Done pools, you are alive until you can no longer mathematically catch the leaders. And just a few lucky picks can mean the difference between finishing in front of thousands of entries or being in the middle of the pack, and in that situation, just showing up matters a lot.

Of course, everyone would instead get off to a hot start and hit some winners early, and yes, that’s always a better outcome. However, winning entries can come from any part of the tour calendar. Every entry will have stretches of poor performances, and in most weeks, the golfer you pick won’t be in contention on Sunday.

Remember back to the difference between the top entries and the average ones. The difference was hitting just a few winners. As long as you have a pick left, you have a chance. Use it.

If you’re going to play a Golf One and Done league, make sure you understand these dynamics before the contest and develop a routine for getting your picks in week in and week out.

Get the PoolGenius Advantage

At PoolGenius, we have been helping people win sports pools for over a decade. We have a history of success in NFL Survivor Pools, Football Pick’em Pools, College Football Bowl Pools, and NCAA Bracket Pools, with our subscriber base winning pools about three times as often as expected.

For the 2026 PGA season, we are building on the success of our first-ever golf product: Golf One And Done Picks.

The product has now helped players win their One and Done pools for 2 years, and we have continued to enhance it to provide more information and tools.

We also asked our One and Done Picks subscribers to tell us how they did after each season. Collectively, 35% reported finishing in the money in a One And Done pool in 2024, and 43% in 2025.

If you want to get the PoolGenius advantage and have tools that help with your process, check us out.