Fantasy Golf

I’m playing fantasy golf this year. It’s not quite as complicated as fantasy football. More laid back. I’ve watched my son and nephew-in-law agonize over their weekly games. I don’t think fantasy golf will be that intense. But it does increase your interest round by round in every golf tournament. As they say somewhere, “It gives you a dog in the fight.” I am a reader of thegolfblog.com, a fairly active commentary on all things golf and Jason (the golfblogger) offered the chance to play in a private league. I don’t think I really understand it. But here’s my explanation for those who are interested (bye, bye most of you):
Players are seeded into three categories—A, B and C. You pick a team for each tournament like the way you used to order Chinese food. Two from Column A, four from column B and two from Column C. You pick from the pool of players entered in the tournament. You have eight on your team. Yahoo figures all this out for you. Before the tournament starts you pick a foursome: One A player, two B players and one C player. You can change out your lineup after each round based on who is playing well and who is not. If Tiger is playing probably everyone picks him. Column A  then is a standoff. The key to doing well when Tiger plays seems to be pick well from B and C. (I think Tiger may well win most of the tournaments he enters for the next several years). Here’s how the scoring works: Low round of the day gets 20 pts. Other golfers receive 2 fewer points for every stroke they finish behind the leader. Winner gets 20 bonus points, second place 10 and third place 5. There’s more, like each player can only be entered 20 times, but this gives you the idea. So many of you have written to ask how I did it. How did I manage to finish a close second in my league and ahead of 94% of the 10,000 fantasy golf players, you wonder? This in my very first fantasy golf league tournament. My technique is to use a pendulum and dowse. Here's how you dowse. So,  you can buy a pendulum or you can make one. I think I’ll make a new pendulum using my favorite ball marker—a Canadian dollar I forgot to spend the last time I was in Canada. Why use a pendulum you may wonder? Well, it is “fantasy” golf after all. My fantasy is that I can pick as well with a pendulum as most people can doing their detailed evaluations or just guessing. This week we are playing in Honolulu. I actually went to this tournament once. My advice if you are going in person: take the bus. There isn’t much parking at that country club. My foursome for the first round will be Jim Furyk, JB Holmes, Anthony Kim and Trevor Immelman. With almost 150 players in the field and no Tiger, it’s pretty much a crap shoot. If you want to try your luck against thegolfbloggers go to thegolfblog.com and follow the links.