🤑 Anything Is Possible

 📢 Fore, Please…

Finally! It’s time for golf. If it feels like the season is starting later than normal, you’re right! January 15th is the latest calendar year starting date that I could find in PGA TOUR history (dating back to at least 1970). Let’s not waste anymore time and just jump into it:

The 2026 One & Done needs filling. I rolled into SplashSports HQ and demanded a massive guarantee. They one-upped me and gave us $1,250,000 — the largest guaranteed OAD in the history of the internet. And now it’s time for us to go to work.

🏆 The Contest
✔️ $1.25M Guaranteed
✔️ $100,000 to First
✔️ $250 per entry ($8/week)
✔️ Available in over 40 states and most of Canada
✔️ Payouts to the Top 10% + Segment Winners
🔗 Join: https://bit.ly/4974Aqz

🤑 But Wait, There’s More!

If you submit 2+ entries you’re in a draw to win a trip for two to THE PLAYERS Championship with a travel stipend and hospitality tickets next to me. Seats are located in the “Intracoastal Club” which is situated between the 12th and 13th holes.

Looking forward to meeting you!
Rick

🚀 Truly A Rocket Ship

The growth of OAD has been insane. I noticed it when the majority of questions during any given Live Chat were questions about the format. But then I looked into the numbers and realized that the RickRunGood OAD has grown 2800% over the last six years. Imagine where we will be in another six.

⌚ The Pendulum Has Swung Too Far

The “scarcity problem” that has been discussed on the PGA TOUR is already prevalent in OAD leagues. There are roughly 16 events that matter and the rest … don’t!

The winner of the RRG OAD last year “only” picked five winners. In a league that large, you’d expect that number to be a lot higher. But those five winners were:

1. Rory at the Masters

2. Scottie at the Memorial

3. Keegan at Travelers

4. Straka at Truist

5. JT at RBC Heritage

They were all Majors or Signature Events! Those prize purses are so much more substantial than the regular events that you need to get them right to find your way to the top of the board. And trust me, picking a winner at the American Express is just as hard as picking the winner of the PGA Championship but they are rewarded vastly differently in our industry.

This also injects the “LIV Problem” because those golfers are only available at the Majors. And it makes sense to pick a LIV golfer at every Major since you’ll be able to save other stars for big signature events — but the pendulum has swung too far.

The LIV golfer dominated the OAD ownership at Majors last year despite failing to win any of them. Which then created immense leverage on the number one player in the world at the biggest events!

Scottie Scheffler was 9% owned at the Masters, 5% owned at the PGA, 5% at the US Open and less than 1% at The Open. He won two of those and collected $8.1M across all four. Those four events alone would have made Scheffler the 8th highest grossing OAD player last season.

I no longer think it’s a requirement to play a LIV golfer at a Major and it might almost be a detriment based on your position.

📢 Game Theory Is THE Theory

It’s abundantly clear that, if you want to win all the money, it’s less about who you pick and more about who your opponents pick — and then who you pick after knowing that.

Game theory is a double-edged sword because it can make you look like the smartest guy in the room … or the dumbest. Playing Bryson DeChambeau at 40% ownership can make you look like a genius (if he wins) or a square if he finished T16.

The key is not only finding golfers who will return you a lot of money, but doing so when they are not popular. Having a golfer win $1,000,000 at 50% ownership is not as good as a golfer winning $600,000 at 1% ownership.

I whipped up some examples of “Actual Value” below. It takes the golfer’s selection rate the week and their earnings from that week to assign the AV. For example, the AV of a golfer earning $1,000,000 at 50% is $500,000 while the AV of a golfer earning $600,000 at 1% is $594,000. It’s a way to balance the two biggest factors that go into your positioning on the leaderboard.

No surprise to see Scottie and Rory top the list but Russell Henley (winning $4M at 3% ownership) and JJ Spaun (winning $4.3M at 0.06%) are league winners. Spaun earned $8.3M last year, which was the sixth best mark in the world. Despite that, 82% of all entries didn’t use Spaun at any point last year!

⚙️ The Tools of the Trade

I realize that this can be a lot to consider every week, especially if you are managing multiple entries. I don’t do this all in my head, I use the tools at PoolGenius to help me manage. If you remember, this is a tool that I've consulted on over the years so I’m quite closely tied to it. And because of my ties, they offer us the best discount in the industry.

The planning alone gives you a leg up on your peers. The biggest mistake I see is that managers don’t use all the best golfers in the world and the numbers back that up. Over 13% of users didn’t select Tommy Fleetwood at all last year. More than 25% didn’t use Sepp Straka. More than 50% didn’t use Keegan Bradley. All three of those guys wound up in the Top 11 of earnings.

Last year I had 15 different OAD entries across a variety of contests. Keeping track of them would have been impossible without a tool like this.

 🍳 It Looks So Easy

Last year, the user “teamshaft” won $50,000 with an entry that earned $24,718,640. I have to admit — it didn’t even look that crazy.

I was expecting 15 winners and countless six figure paydays. That didn’t happen. In fact, he got off to a really slow start and was certainly well below average for the first 33% of the season. Then he caught fire at the big events in the middle of the year before having a respectable, but not outlandish, finish.

My takeaways: 1) you don’t have to be perfect. The slow start, only getting $82,000 from Russell Henley and $21,000 from Tommy Fleetwood who were both really valuable players last season, and five different missed cuts. 2) The big ones really matter. There is such a stark contrast between purses on the PGA TOUR that every signature win is basically worth 2.5 regular wins. 3) you’re never out of it. The big money is really stacked in the middle and back half of the season. Plus, with segment payouts, there’s always a reason to make an educated pick.

ALSO!!! That entry had a $2.5M gap between itself and second place, which was the same gap between 2nd and 16th. Which leads me to the wisest words of all time — anything is possible.

🏆 The Contest
✔️ $1.25M Guaranteed
✔️ $100,000 to First
✔️ $250 per entry ($8/week)
✔️ Available in over 40 states and most of Canada
✔️ Payouts to the Top 10% + Segment Winners
🔗 Join: https://bit.ly/4974Aqz

👁️ If You’re A Visual Person…

I recorded a 40-minute OAD season preview with Jason Lisk of PoolGenius. We discussed:

• How to rank the fields.

• When to use LIV golfers.

• When to be chalky and when to be contrarian.

• Golfers to rebound in 2026.

• A variety of other topics.

Got a question for me? Reply to the email and I’ll get back to you…