How to Run a Season-Long Golf League

A one-week pool is a party. A season-long league is a relationship. The best ones run from the first event in January to the Tour Championship in August with the same twelve people arguing about the same standings every Sunday night, and the worst ones are dead by the Players because nobody understood the scoring. Here is how to set one up so it lasts the whole year - the format choices, the points system, the calendar, and the three rules that stop it falling apart in June.

Pick a season shape

“Season-long” can mean three different things, and the choice decides how much work everyone does each week:

• Every-week picks. Members pick a new team for each tournament. Maximum engagement, maximum drop-off - by May the people who forgot two weeks running are out of it. Works best for small groups who play every week anyway.
• One-and-done. One golfer a week, never the same golfer twice, earnings or points added up across the year. The lowest-effort format that still rewards planning, because the whole season is a budget: spend the world No. 1 in April and he's gone for August. Our full guide: one-and-done strategy.
• Locked roster with a bench. Draft or pick a roster once, carry a bench, set your counted lineup each week. Feels like a fantasy football league; needs a commissioner who'll chase lineups.

Most groups running their first full season do best with one-and-done or every-week picks on a reduced schedule (the next section).

You don't have to play every week

The PGA TOUR season is nearly forty stroke-play events. Nobody in your group wants forty picks. Choose a schedule of 10-15 tournaments - the four majors, the Players, the signature events, the playoffs - and skip the opposite-field weeks. A shorter schedule keeps every event meaningful and gives a slow starter a way back. Publish the schedule before the season starts and don't add to it midway.

Season points: top-heavy beats linear

Season standings are decided by how you convert each week's finish into points. A linear table (first gets 20, second 19, and so on) means a pool of twenty is decided by consistency, and by July the leader is untouchable. A top-heavy curve - the winner gets far more than second, second far more than fifth, and the bottom half gets almost nothing - keeps the league alive because one great week moves you five places. For groups over about thirty, the top-heavy curve is the only one that works; for a dozen friends either is fine, and Moving Day picks the right default from the pool size. Whichever you choose, publish the table on day one.

The missed-cut rule matters more over a season

In a single week a missed cut costs one team one bad weekend. Over a season the missed-cut rule decides the whole character of the league. A harsh fixed penalty (plus-10 a round) punishes anyone who takes a chance and rewards picking the safest possible golfer every week; a field-relative rule (the field's median score plus a couple of strokes) hurts, but not more than the cut itself. We tested every common rule against the full 2026 schedule - the results are in missed-cut rules, tested on a real season. For a season league, choose field-relative.

Three rules that keep a season alive

• A hard weekly deadline - the first tee time. Not Wednesday midnight, not “before you go to bed.” Picks lock when the tournament tees off, the app locks them, and there are no exceptions, because the first exception is the end of the league.
• A default pick. Miss the deadline and you get a default - your previous week's lineup, or the top available golfer. A zero for the week is what makes people quit; a default keeps them in the standings and back next week.
• Mid-season prizes. A small prize for the best major, or for the first half of the season, gives the people in 9th through 12th something to play for in June. Bragging rights count; so does a round-by-round side game like the rabbit.

Money, if there is any

Season buy-ins are usually collected once, in January, and paid out in August. Publish the payout split with the schedule - a common one is 50/30/20 for the top three with something for the best single week. Moving Day tracks buy-ins and payouts and shows every member where they stand, but the money itself moves however your group moves money; the platform never holds it. Details in payouts and buy-ins.

Setting it up

One competition of type season, the schedule chosen from the tournament list, the format (open picks, one-and-done, or a draft with a bench), the points curve, the missed-cut rule, and the payout split. Members get a reminder before each deadline, standings update live through every round, and the History tab keeps every week's result so the argument about who had the better April can be settled with numbers. See season competitions.