Without tiers, every golf pool ends the same way: eight people pick Scottie Scheffler, one person picks a 200-to-1 longshot who misses the cut, and the whole thing is decided by whether Rory's putter shows up on Sunday. The golf pool tier format exists to spread the picks out — one golfer per group, so everyone gets a favorite, a mid-tier name, and somebody from the bottom of the board.
How many tiers, and who goes where
At the Masters, with roughly ninety players, four or six tiers is standard. Six tiers with pick-six-count-four is what most serious friend pools use. At a full-field PGA event with 150-plus players, six tiers still works — the bottom tier just gets longer.
Casual groups should use four tiers. Groups that have run pools before can handle six without much explanation.
The real decision is how you sort players into groups. World ranking is stable: Tier 1 is the top ten, Tier 2 is 11–20, and so on. Easy to defend when someone complains. Vegas odds reflect current form — a slumping star drops, a hot rookie climbs. Odds make for better arguments in the group chat. Rankings are fine for a once-a-year office pool. Odds are better if your friends watch golf weekly.
The messy bottom tier
Tiers 1 through 4 are clean. Tier 5 or 6 is always "everyone else." At Augusta that might be forty names. That's normal. Call it the dart-throw zone and move on.
Some commissioners bump a popular name up a tier for fun — Phil in Tier 4 when the odds say Tier 5. Fine, as long as you announce it before picks open.
Rules on top of the tiers
Pick one per tier and count all six: simplest math, every pick matters. Pick six, count four: the format I'd recommend for most groups. Two bad picks won't kill you.
Salary-cap formats — each golfer has a price, build a roster under a budget — are more strategic and harder to explain. Most commissioners I talk to run one-per-tier and never look back.
Lock the sheet with your invite
Publish the tier list when you send the invite. Note whether you used rankings or odds, and when the list freezes. If a golfer withdraws before lock, let people swap within the same tier. After lock, they eat the penalty you already defined.
The Money List generates ranking-weighted tiers for whichever event you pick — six tiers, one golfer each — and lets you choose how many scores count. You handle the invite; the sheet stays the same for everyone.
Ready to run your pool? The Money List builds ranking-weighted tiers for each event — you set how many scores count and share one link.
Create a friends pool