Friends in fore,

Commish discusses the optimal picking strategy below, but first, three key things for you to know...

1) Picks open NEXT WEEK.

Deadline is the first tee time for The American Express - in the early AM on Jan. 19. Picks will be due for both YEYPO One-and-Done (pick a guy and get his earnings) and Big John Survivor (pick a guy to make the cut).

2) Referring friends gets you Free SZNs for LIFE.

Tell friends to click/tap your referral link (find it on the Friends page).
Once you hit 10 lifetime referrals (every referral in every SZN counts!), you become a SZN Legend and get free SZNs for life in your sport of choice. At 20 referrals, you get two sports, At 30, it's FOUR.

3) You can run your own golf competitions using SZN Groups.

We offer FOUR golf competition formats in SZN Groups: One-and-Done (OAD), Three-and-Done (3AD), Survivor (cut streak), and Majors Roster.
It takes 1 minute to set up:

• Create your Group
• Add a golf competition (or several!)
• Send friends the Group referral link
• That's it. Friends DON'T need to be in our main Golf SZN in order to play in your Group.

For full details on the three competitions you get by joining Golf SZN and how to win the OAD, scroll on...

YEYPO OAD - ONE AND DONE

How it works: Pick one golfer each week. Earn the prize money that golfer earns. Can't pick the same golfer twice! Prizes for most overall earnings, plus THREE intervals. And you win a "Skin" if you're the only person to pick that week's winner.

Prizes: $20,975 (223 places)

Starts: Jan. 19 (tee off of The American Express)

The schedule: You'll pick in 30 events: From The American Express (starts Jan 19) through the BMW Championship (starts Aug 17). We skip the Zurich Classic.

Why "YEYPO"? It's an acronym for "Y.E. Yang memorial Pick One". Y.E. might have pulled off the greatest upset in modern professional sports - he remains the ONLY person to ever trail Tiger Woods going into a Major final round... and win. The joke here is that, in a One And Done format (like this is!), likely exactly 0 people would have picked Y.E. Yang to win that week.

BIG JOHN - SURVIVOR

How it works: Pick one golfer to make the cut. That's it! If you make the cut, you survive to the next week. Can only use each golfer ONCE. Last person standing is our Survivor champ.

Prizes: $2,400 (25 places)

Starts: Jan. 19 (tee off of The American Express)

The schedule: Same as YEYPO (starts Jan. 19). Lasts until 1 person is left standing.

Why "Big John"? How John Daly EVER played professional golf at its highest level is a damn miracle. Dude can crush a 6'er, smoke two packs in 10 minutes, then go bomb a course record. Would you pick John Daly to make the cut with your survivor life on the line? Hell no. But dude is still golf's ultimate survivor.

THE BROOKSIES - MAJORS ROSTER

How it works: Pick a roster of 8 golfers for each of the four Major tournaments. Most combined prize money in each Major wins, plus an Overall interval for earnings over the 4 Majors. (You can reuse golfers in this competition!)

Prizes: $11,900 (170 places)

Starts: The Masters is the first Major (starts Apr. 6).

The schedule: The four Majors: The Masters, The PGA Championship, The US Open, The Open

Why "The Brooksies"? Brooks Koepka might have been injured/ineffectual in 2022, but don't sleep on the Majors killer. The ever-beefy Brooksy once said "Sometimes the Majors are the easiest ones to win." Absurd... if coming from someone other than a 4-time Major champ (with 9 additional top 10s).

Now, let's talk Golf SZN picking strategy...

HOW TO WIN YEYPO OAD

Commish isn't Tigerstradamus, but I've played in a lot of golf competitions AND I have a ton of data from last year's Golf SZN.

Last year's Golf SZN data reveals these key strategic insights for YEYPO One-and-Done...

1) Plan for it to go down to the final event.

I used Mr. Goldman Sachs (Patrick Cantlay) as the main photo above because he won last year's BMW Championship (our final event), and that win decided the overall YEYPO One-and-Done title.

My educated guess is that Golf SZN will always come down to the final event, because the purses are so big (Cantlay got $2.7M last year) and picking will be all over the board (because people have saved different golfers for the very end, or not saved any top golfers at all).

This also rings true for our three intervals - every 10 events we get fresh life, and I expect they'll also come down to the wire.

So, expect to need picks you feel good about till the very end.

2) Titles and Top 5s easily overcome missed cuts

Last year's champ, @Canigs13, missed not one, not two, but SIX cuts en route to a YEYPO title. That included four consecutive missed cuts in the 21st through the 24th events.

If you look at @Canigs13's picks, you'll also notice a TON of huge cashes, including three wins in the final six events.

Last year's runner-up, @Macattack (see picks), also missed six cuts, as did third place @Clodney (see picks). @Clodney didn't even make a cut till our 4th event. Tell that to your straggler friends who miss Week 1!

Moral of the story: Go with golfers you think can actually win the event, even if they also sometimes bomb out and miss cuts. (This is also a big reason we made the Survivor (cut streak) it's own competition with separate picks!)

3) Don't leave top golfers on the table

The data for our top 10 finishers last year was clear: They all did a GREAT job of using most - if not all - of the top 20 golfers in the world. (Click usernames in last year's final standings to see a person's pick history.)

Golfers don't tee it up every week. Some guys play a lot in Europe and might only play 8-10 YEYPO events. And, of course, the LIV guys - say what you want about their decision - will only be playing in the four Majors.

Moral of the story: Don't save TOO many guys for too long. You might run out of opportunities to pick them.

T-minus 2 weeks. Tell your friends. Think about how you'd top Harry Higgs and Joel Dahmen's celebration at last year's Phoenix Open. Then go do that after you double bogey 18 at your local muni.

Yours in metal stick swinging,
The Commish