Happy New Year to everyone. Last night was one of my favorite events of the year: the annual golf fantasy league draft. Oh my, how this night illustrates that hope really does spring eternal. If you’re a golf nut like me and don’t participate in one of these things, I urge you to do so. There’s nothing like having a personal rooting interest in every tournament of the year.

The night started in the corner of my local Greene Turtle Pub with an hour or so of collecting entry fees and reviewing the ground rules. This league is based solely on earnings in official scheduled events on the PGA, Champions and LPGA Tours. Each team selects six players and the overall prize pool pays out to the top 3 teams for the year. Approximately 1/3 of the prize pool is set aside for the top team in the 4 major championships and the Players Championship.

Then the draft order is drawn out of a hat and the real fun begins. Everyone has their cheat sheets and is huddled around a table, much like professional teams during their draft. There is a ton of cajoling banter throughout and God help you if you take longer than a minute to make your selection.

You might think that drawing one of the top couple of spots in the drafting order would be advantageous. Au contraire, mon frère. Last year all three winners came from the middle of the pack. The reasons why are because the top players are divided into fractional picks and the draft order is reversed in the 2nd, 4th and 6th rounds. I drew a middle round slot this year, 12th out of 23 teams. My strategy was to avoid the partial picks and take 6 young players, all of whom play a lot and have a good to great upside. Here they are: Hunter Mahan, Pat Perez, Dustin Johnson, Henrik Stenson, Matt Kuchar and Ji Yai Shin.

Looks like a winner to me!

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