Fantasy Makes It More Fun…Especially for Golf!

Delivering sports news, team/player info & the latest jerseys.

Fantasy Makes It More Fun…Especially for Golf!

18 April 2010 9 views

Crawling out of bed to go to work is hard enough. Crawling out of bed even earlier, and on a weekend, seems like blasphemy, even if I smell bacon. There better be eggs and a hot woman in an apron – only an apron.

Believe it or not, however, there is one Sunday every year when I get up with the sun. How could this anomaly happen? Three words: The British Open.

I live in Arizona, which means the Open Championship comes on TV at 6 a.m. I could DVR it, but I have grown to love my annual ritual of watching golf as the sun comes up – but only once a year.

The British Open is even more fun because I play fantasy golf. There probably aren’t a whole lot of leagues older than the one I helped start as a sports reporter with the Albuquerque Tribune in 1995. We’ve been going strong ever since.

Now, you may have lots of questions. And they might include: how do you play fantasy golf, where can you play fantasy golf, and do I have a life?

Well, fantasy golf has actually grown to be marginally popular among major sports websites, and a host of independent sites also provide different versions of the game. Here’s the way we do it: each owner (there are usually 10 of us in our league) drafts a team of 8 golfers. The amount of money that each team earns on the PGA Tour (money is doubled for the majors) is compiled throughout the season (our season runs from about March 1 through the last major, the PGA Championship – or about six months).

Owners can drop players and pick up available players on the waiver wire for $2 per transaction. Our entry fee is generally $50. The most enjoyable part is heading back to Albuquerque once a year to see friends and take part in the live draft.

I also play fantasy football, and I find fantasy golf to be nearly as much fun as the pigskin version. I find the rules that we play by are more fun than picking a team from several groups of golfers (usually A, B and C groups), a common format on big sports sites. There is a lot of strategy involved with our fantasy golf league, especially when it comes to making transactions, which usually surround the majors.

You have to be careful not to drop someone that is a good player because someone else can steal them on the waiver wire, but at the same time, you want to maximize how many players you have in every major because the amount of money your players earn is doubled during the majors. Also, you have to find a balance of players who play full-time on the PGA tour, and blend them with players like Padraig Harrington and Lee Westwood who play on the European Tour while playing well in the majors.

All in all, fantasy golf is a lot of fun, and it makes you root for and against players in every single tournament – just like fantasy football. You can make up a lot of ground in the standings by winning a major, so every team usually has a chance to win some cash at the end (we pay three spots: 70% for first, 20% for second and 10% for third).

Even if my teams don’t win (and they haven’t recently), it’s still great to watch these golfers on Sunday at a major. The pressure is on them to perform, and for me to smell some bacon.

Brian Bujdos is a award winning writer with hundreds of articles published online and in print, covering everything from sports reporting to healthcare reform and more. Brian is a frequent contributor for Viamedic.com, a safe online pharmacy providing comprehensive research, such as the Erectile Dysftunction Resource Center.