A men's major is on the calendar four times a year, and every time, somebody in your office or your group chat says "we should do a pool." Then they remember the spreadsheet, the math, the chasing people for their share, and the idea dies. This guide is the version where the idea does not die. It walks through running a pool on OfficePoolGolf — setup, invites, scoring, and payout — in about the time it takes to drink a cup of coffee.

Set up, invite, score, and pay out a major tournament pool in under fifteen minutes.

Why an app beats a spreadsheet

Spreadsheets work right up until the tournament starts. Live scoring breaks the moment you try to keep up by hand. The cut rule that seemed obvious in setup turns into an argument on Saturday morning. Tiebreakers come down to who responded fastest in a group text. Payment tracking lives in three different email threads and a sticky note. By Sunday night you are still chasing two people for their entry fee, and the winner is asking whether the math accounted for so-and-so withdrawing on Friday.

OPG runs that math for you. Every stroke posts as official scores publish. Cut rules apply automatically. Tiebreakers cascade in a defined order so the leaderboard always has a clean answer. Payments are tracked on a per-entry ledger you can settle as money moves. Round recaps go out (subject to each entrant's preferences) so nobody has to refresh the page to find out where they stand.

The platform is always free for players. Commissioner pricing varies by tier — the entry-level Par tier is always free, and higher tiers may carry a flat per-pool setup fee that the commissioner pays once at creation. OPG never touches the entry fees or payouts — those happen directly between you and your group, the way they always have. The app is the scoreboard and the rules engine; you and your friends remain in charge of the actual cash. More on that below.

The five steps to running your pool

Start to finish, hosting a pool is five concrete steps. None of them are hard. The whole flow lives behind a sign-in, so the first thing to do is sign in — Google login or magic email link, whichever you prefer.

1. 1

   Create the pool

   Once you are signed in, the new-pool wizard asks for the tournament, a name, and a tier. The four tiers — Par, Birdie, Eagle, Albatross — control how big the pool can grow and how much configuration you have access to. Par is always free; higher tiers may carry a flat setup fee that scales with capacity. Pick the smallest tier that gives you the features you actually want. Most office pools fit in Birdie or Eagle. The wizard saves a draft as you go, so you can stop and come back.

2. 2

   Set the rules

   This is the only step that takes any real thought. You pick:

   • Roster size and counting golfers — how many golfers each entrant drafts and how many of those count toward the team total. Pick six, count the top four is the most common shape.
   • Value bands — every golfer in the field has a point value scaled to world ranking, and your roster has a point cap. The cap forces real trade-offs in roster construction (you cannot stack the entire top of the world ranking on one team). Note that these are points, never dollars.
   • Cut rule — what to do when a roster golfer misses the cut, withdraws, or is disqualified. Three options: worst_active (most common), fixed_penalty, or field_average. The How Scoring Works guide walks each one.
   • Tiebreaker — how to separate teams with identical totals. best_single is the most common; predict_winner is the most fun.
   • Payouts — how many places get paid and what percentage each place gets.

   The Commissioner Guide goes deep on each choice. If your group is new to this, default to roster six count four, the worst_active cut rule, and best_single as the tiebreaker — it is the configuration that produces the cleanest week the first time through.

3. 3

   Invite your group

   Pools have three visibility modes: public (listed on the browse page), unlisted (link-only — the default for office pools), and password_protected (Eagle and Albatross only). Every pool generates a share link automatically. Email it, paste it into your group chat, drop it in Slack. Anyone with the link who signs in can join. Your tier sets the entry cap and how many entries one person can submit; the wizard surfaces both numbers before you publish.

4. 4

   Lock and score

   Rosters lock at the tournament's first tee-off — Thursday morning for a standard major, Saturday morning for a Weekend Shootout. After lock, the leaderboard runs itself. Strokes update through the week. Position movement is tracked between rounds. Cut, withdrawal, and disqualification statuses sync as the tour publishes them. There is no manual score entry, no refresh button, and no commissioner action required during play. You watch golf with your group.

5. 5

   Pay out the winner

   When the final round goes official, the pool flips to completed and the payout column lights up. OPG does not handle the money — it never has. You pay your winners directly using whichever payment app your group prefers, and the in-app payment tracker lets you mark each settlement as it happens. Same as it ever was, except now the math is clean and the receipts are in one place.

For a hands-on walk-through with screens, see the Quick Start.

What it costs

OPG is always free for players — joining a pool, drafting a roster, and watching the leaderboard never costs the entrant anything. The commissioner picks a tier at setup: Par is always free, and higher tiers (Birdie, Eagle, Albatross) may carry a flat one-time setup fee that scales with capacity and feature scope. OPG takes nothing from the pool itself; entry fees flow entirely between the commissioner and the entrants.

Common questions

Can I run a pool for an event that is not a major? Today the focus is the four men's majors of the men's professional golf calendar. Other tour events run as well, and the catalog continues to grow.

Can entrants edit their roster after they submit? Yes, up to the lock time. The exact edit window depends on the tier (Par locks edits once submitted; Birdie and above allow unlimited pre-lock edits and a small budget of post-lock edits). Once the pool locks, rosters are frozen.

What happens if a golfer withdraws after the pool locks? The engine handles it. Withdrawn and disqualified golfers fall under the same cut rule mechanic — the rounds they did not play get filled with the rule the commissioner chose. Nobody re-drafts mid-tournament.

How does the leaderboard handle ties? Tied entries share the combined payout for the positions they cover, or are separated by your chosen tiebreaker. The How Scoring Works guide covers the full cascade.

For the long tail of configuration questions, the FAQ is the comprehensive reference.

Ready to host

The game within the game starts when you and your friends draft. Picking the player who quietly grinds out a top-twenty matters as much as picking the headline favorite. Reading the cut line on Friday night is its own form of theater. The app is the scaffolding — it keeps the math honest and the receipts clean so the conversation can stay where it belongs, in the group chat.

If your group has been talking about doing a pool, this is the short part. Open the sign-in page, run the wizard, paste the link, and you are about fifteen minutes from a tournament you will actually enjoy watching as a group.