The four major championships are the spine of the professional golf calendar. The first plays in early April; the second in mid-May; the third in mid-June; the fourth in mid-July. Together they cover roughly three and a half months of the spring and early summer, and they are the tournaments where the best fields, the best venues, and the best storylines align. For a group running golf pools, treating the four majors as a season-long arc is a natural fit — engagement compounds across the four tournaments, rosters get sharper as entrants learn from earlier results, and the group develops shared history that the standalone pool format cannot match. This guide walks how to think about that arc.
The four majors are different tournaments with different demands. A season-long pool that respects those differences — rather than treating each major as a copy of the last — produces deeper engagement and better-built rosters across the calendar.
The four-major arc
The four majors share the headline traits that define major-championship golf: deep fields of the best golfers in the world, demanding venues, four-round formats, and Sunday afternoons that produce some of the highest-stakes finishes in the sport. But each major has a distinct character that meaningfully shapes how a pool around it plays.
Early April — the season opener
The first major of the year sets the tone for the spring. The course archetype rewards short-game touch and putting; the field is the smallest of any major (under one hundred golfers); and the cut is the tightest. For a pool, this major is the most front-loaded in star power — the small field means almost every entrant in your pool will recognize almost every golfer in the bracket. Roster builds that stack the top of the world ranking are more viable here than at any other major.
Mid-May — the PGA Championship
The PGA Championship is the deepest field of the four majors when you include the bracket of PGA professionals. The cut at 70 and ties is the most generous of the four. Course archetype rewards long, accurate ball-strikers on demanding parkland setups. The PGA Championship is the most pool-friendly of the four majors — large field, wide cut, broad storyline base.
Mid-June — the US Open
The US Open is the toughest test on the calendar. Narrow fairways, dense rough, fast greens, and a setup philosophy that prizes par. The cut at 60 and ties is the tightest after the season opener. Roster builds that worked at the PGA Championship rarely transfer cleanly — the US Open rewards reliability over upside, and entrants who learn that lesson get better as the season progresses.
Mid-July — The Open Championship
The Open is the major most different from the others. Links golf, wind, ground-game shot-making, and pot bunkers reward a player archetype that the spring majors do not select for. The cut at 70 and ties matches the PGA Championship's cut policy, but the weather drama produces variance the other majors do not see. The Open is the major where reading the player matters more than chasing the highest world ranking.
When to launch your season pool
A season-long pool runs as four separate tournament pools under a shared name. The platform does not currently combine the four majors into one cumulative leaderboard, so the "season-long" structure is conceptual — your group runs four pools, tracks the standings outside the platform (a shared spreadsheet works), and awards a season-long winner at the end of The Open.
Open each tournament pool seven to ten days before R1 for that tournament. Send the season-standings update after each major completes, ideally Sunday evening of trophy day or Monday morning at the latest. Engagement holds across the four pools when entrants see the running tally; it fades when the gap between pools turns silent.
Picking your rules across the season
The default temptation is to use identical rules for all four tournaments. The default is wrong. The four majors are different enough that the rules that fit one fit the others only by coincidence; treating them as a single rule set leaves engagement on the table.
The cut rule (worst_active versus fixed_penalty) is the safest setting to standardize — worst_active works across all four majors. The cut policy itself varies by tournament and the platform handles that automatically; you pick the rule, the tournament defines the cut line.
The tiebreaker is the rule most worth varying. best_single works at the PGA Championship and the US Open because both tournaments routinely produce low rounds that resolve ties cleanly. predict_winner is the better fit for The Open Championship — the Sunday drama at a links course is the kind of storyline where a winner-pick adds genuine engagement. The season-opener major is famous enough that predict_winner works there too, perhaps better than at any other tournament.
The payout structure depends on field size of the pool, not the tournament. If your group has the same fifteen entrants across all four majors, the same 60/30/10 split works for all four; if pool participation grows over the season (common — engagement builds as the arc progresses), widen the payout for the later tournaments. See Golf Pool Rules Explained for the full set of rule choices and the Tiebreakers Explained guide for the full tiebreaker cascade.
What changes across the season
Three things shift as your group moves through the four majors.
Entrant sophistication. First-time entrants in April draft poorly. By July, the same entrants are reading practice-round commentary, checking ball-striking statistics, and remembering which veterans played well at which course types earlier in the season. The PGA Championship is the major where this learning curve is most visible — it sits one month after the season opener, so the lessons are fresh but the field is different enough that entrants have to apply the lessons rather than copy the picks.
Field overlap. Many of the same golfers play all four majors, but the players who matter at the top of each leaderboard vary considerably. A veteran links specialist who finishes top ten at The Open may have missed the cut at the US Open; a long-hitter who contended at the PGA Championship may struggle in links winds. Roster builds that drift toward "favorite golfers" over the season tend to plateau; roster builds that adjust to each tournament's archetype tend to improve.
Group dynamics. The first major is novelty — everybody is excited, everybody wants to play, draft conversations dominate the workplace chat. By the third or fourth major, the group has settled into rhythms. Some entrants will skip a major (vacation, summer schedule, lost interest after a tough draft). Send the season-standings update after each major to keep the arc visible to entrants who might otherwise drift.
Roster patterns that work across the season
The season-long entrant who finishes well across four pools is rarely the one who tried to win every individual pool. The pattern that works is the one that respects each tournament's archetype:
- Spring majors (April + PGA Championship): bias toward long, accurate ball-strikers and elite putters.
- US Open: bias toward reliability — proven major performers with strong cut-making records.
- The Open Championship: bias toward links specialists and wind players.
See Picking Your Roster for the value-band trade-off math; the math is the same across all four majors, but the player archetype the math is applied to shifts. Entrants who internalize this earn back the variance they take on by chasing one big tournament win.
Setting up Weekend Shootouts as a season backstop
A Weekend Shootout (R3 + R4 only, Saturday lock) is a strong addition to any major-championship pool calendar. The Weekend Shootout format catches the entrants who missed the Thursday lock — common across a season of four majors — and gives your group a second engagement spike for each tournament. Some groups run both a standard pool and a Weekend Shootout for every major; some only run the Weekend Shootout for tournaments with hard-to-hit Thursday locks (notably The Open, where the lock falls overnight for US entrants). Either pattern works.
Common questions
Why does this guide not include the first major of the year by name?›
The first major's name is trademarked aggressively by its organizing club, and direct marketing-prose use carries legal risk for sites like ours. The tournament itself is covered structurally throughout this guide — it is the early-April major with the smallest field and the tightest cut — and your pool around it works exactly the same way as a pool around any other tournament.
Can the platform combine the four major-championship pools into one season-long leaderboard?›
Not today. The platform handles one tournament pool at a time; the season-long arc is a convention your group runs outside the leaderboard (a shared spreadsheet tracking points across the four pools is the common pattern). Combined-season leaderboards are a backlog item; if this would change how your group runs the season, the contact link at the bottom of any guide is the right place to flag it.
Should I use the same entry fee across all four majors?›
Usually yes. A consistent entry fee — including a zero-dollar bragging-rights pool — keeps the arc visible and the participation predictable. Groups that vary the fee across tournaments tend to see entrant counts drift as the season progresses, with the higher-fee pools shedding casuals and the lower-fee pools attracting them back.
Set one up
A season-long pool around the four majors is the deepest engagement pattern golf pools produce. If your group has been thinking about it, sign in, open the wizard, set up the first major, and walk the host walkthrough. The arc takes roughly three and a half months and rewards the groups who treat each tournament as its own draft rather than a copy of the last one.