What Is Daily Fantasy Golf?
For decades, playing fantasy sports with the Big 4 leagues (NFL, MLB, NBA and NHL) has become common place in society and for the longest time there have been people that have played fantasy golf even though it’s never been that popular…until now!
Daily fantasy golf came out to the world in January of 2014 when DraftKings.com stepped away from the big 4 fantasy sports and introduced fantasy golf on its site causing an explosion in popularity that has continued to grow every year since.
DFS Golf 101
Unlike Full Season Fantasy Golf Daily Fantasy Golf, also known as DFS golf is when you take an individual PGA Tournament and create a contest that begins and ends during that tournament. In full season golf leagues, your contest goes for the entire PGA Tour season but in DFS golf, the contest can be completed in one weekly event. In fact, many daily fantasy sites offer golf contests to be played over just one day or two days of the golf tournament. Just like other traditional fantasy golf leagues, players are picked for a lineup or team but points are allotted to individual golfers based on their achievements during the tournament.
How Do You Play Daily Fantasy Golf?
The most popular way to play DFS fantasy golf is in a salary cap contest. You are given a fictitious salary cap ($50K at DraftKings and $60K at FanDuel) to pick 6 golfers from a provided list of the players entered that week into a PGA Tournament. Each player is given a “salary” which is a predetermined value the sites have set as to how good a golfer that player is. It is up to you to pick 6 golfers and stay within that salary cap. Sound easy? Well when you start picking players to build your lineup and you realize that you can’t have all the golfers you want it does get difficult. Normally you have to find players in the bottom third of the list to help you fit in golfers from the upper third of the list so that you can create a lineup that will win you your contest.
Once that lineup is created, you can enter it into as many tournaments as you want. There are free contests, paid contests, head to head contests and Guaranteed Prize Pool’s (GPP’s) that have the MEGA cash prizes. There are a dizzying amount of games that you can play, it’s just a matter of how much you can handle.
Scoring is done on individual criteria such as birdies, eagles, pars and position in final standings. Bogeys and double bogeys are point deductions. Points for all 6 golfers are added up and the team or lineup that has the most points wins the contest.
Is Daily Fantasy Golf Free?
Yes and No. There are tons of free games on every DFS site but they are just for fun and bragging rights. There are times when DFS sites will offer a “Freeroll Contest” in which you can enter a lineup for free and there is a cash prize to be won (usually about a $5,000 prize pool) and there are games to play for real money where you put in a set entry fee amount, choose your preferred contest and if you have the better or best team…you win the cash prize!
Difference Between DFS Golf and Regular Golf Fantasy Games?
The short answer is time. Season long fantasy golf leagues are as the name suggests, for the full PGA Tour season which lasts almost 11 months. Daily fantasy golf can be played over a single tournament or even just a single day. The types of games that you can play differ as well but the length of time is the biggest difference between DFS golf and yearlong fantasy golf.
How Popular is Daily Fantasy Golf?
HUGE! Each DFS site offers during golf’s 4 majors big fantasy golf contests and they fill up pretty quick. DraftKings runs their Fantasy Golf Millionaire and they will have a total prize pool of $2-5 Million dollars with a 1st place finish making someone an instant millionaire with a $1 Million check. FanDuel’s main contest isn’t as big but usually gets the 1st place winner a hefty bump in the bank account. Tournaments like these only have prizes this big for popular sports and fantasy golf has definitely jumped into the 4th sport ahead of NHL fantasy games and some would consider golf to be at #3.
