My friends and I play a game before the majors and sometimes bigger PGA Tour events, but especially the Masters. Five or six of us get together on the Wednesday before the tournament begins and draw numbered balls out of a bottle. Whoever gets the No. 1 ball drafts first. You establish an order, then each guy picks a team of eight players, and once a golfer is off the board, he can’t be chosen by someone else. For instance, as you might imagine, the guy with the No. 1 pick this year chose Tiger Woods. No one else can draft Tiger.

Anyway, you play for money each day. If you have the tournament leader or the guy who shot the low round of the day, the other players in the game pay you. Also, the guy with the lowest four-player total also gets money each day. At the event’s conclusion, someone in the group also cashes for having the low four-man total and the overall winner. We play for $2 for each daily category and $5 on the overall, which means your total possible loss is a modest $30.

Masters.org makes it much easier to track your team. You can even customize it so it displays on the eight players you drafted. That way, you can see just how shitty Chris DiMarco or Sergio Garcia are doing. And the streaming video of extra coverage is great, especially when you didn’t pick Phil Mickelson even though you had a chance and he triples the first hole and you laugh in your friend’s face. Because even though Phillip has won at Augusta before, he’ll break your heart nearly every time you bet on him. I know from experience.

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