Golf Draft Kit: RotoWire Staff/Expert League Results

This article is part of our Golf Draft Kit series.

Jon Rahm topped this year's RotoWire annual staff/expert golf league, becoming the most expensive golfer in this format in four years. It was part of a changing of the guard at the top of the draft with three new players in the top five from last season.

RotoWire held its annual staff/expert golf league draft Tuesday and the results may be a good guide for those who have a golf league and spend a fixed budget on golfers. The league expanded to 15 entries as a team of Adam Schefter and Kyle Soppe of ESPN joined the league. Apparently Schefter's vast network of sources informed him this was the best season-long league in existence, and Soppe joined forces so he could add some serious trash talk. We'll see how they fare against the grizzled veterans of this league in its 23nd year.

The RotoWire staff/expert golf league rules base winners on total earnings in PGA tournaments from the Sony Open to the final FedExCup event (we skipped the Tournament of Champions and also didn't use the fall portion of the 2021-22 wrap-around schedule), excluding those PGA Tour events held the same week as the World Golf Championship tournaments and the British Open. We also use only a fraction of the final FedEx championship event money since it's massive relative to the other tournaments.

Our format also includes bonus for the four majors. As a result, some European players may be ranked higher than your league. If a European golfer plays in just the four majors and WGC tournaments, he'll still have a lot of value in our league. Our league had 15 members, a budget of $100 per team and each team starts five golfers per week with a total roster of nine golfers. The league has been around since 2000.

Rahm went for $58, which is the highest price since Dustin Johnson went for $60 in 2019. Rahm's cost is even higher considering the expansion to 15 teams from 14 in 2019. However, only three golfers went for more than $50 (Justin Thomas and Collin Morikawa). The number of players going for $55 or more has declined the past four years from four in 2018 to two each in 2019 and 2020 and just one last year, reflecting the lack of a dominant golfer (as was much the case in the 2000s with Tiger Woods).

The 2021 league had Dustin Johnson as the top golfer at $55. Justin Thomas was the top golfer in 2020 at $64. Dustin Johnson was the most expensive golfer in our league in 2019 at $60 with Justin Thomas at $57.

I thought the top 10 players may have declined more significantly given the expansion, but still jumped at the chance to pay $40 on Rory McIlroy. He has top-three upside despite an underwhelming 2020-21 season and remains a threat to win any major. I then tried to grab several younger players on an upward career trajectory such as Aaron Wise ($12) and Cam Davis ($15) along with some sleepers for increased tournament appearances (Kurt Kitayama, Francesco Molinari).

Notable sleepers who went for more than most expert rankings included Talor Gooch at $17, Christiaan Bezuidenhout at $13 and Matthew Wolff at $24.

I thought Corey Conners may have been the best value at $21 as he ranks 17th in RotoWire's projected earnings and went for $19 less than 16h-ranked McIlroy. Abraham Ancer at $26 also looks like a good value considering he's 13th in RotoWire's projected earnings. Harold Varner at $12 was likely mispriced as Greg Vara spent all his remaining budget late in the draft rather than leave money on the table. Tiger Woods went for $1, his all-time low. I hope he's healthy enough to earn that mark.

While these dollar values may not exactly fit your league's rules, this should be a good benchmark for your draft preparation.

Here are the participants:

Greg Vara - RotoWire golf writer
Len Hochberg - RotoWire golf writer
Kevin O'Brien - RotoWire golf editor
Jeff Ritter - Director of Content at Morning Read
Jeff Erickson - RotoWire senior editor
Peter Schoenke - RotoWire president (and worst real golfer in league)
Tim Schuler - RotoWire COO (and the league's best actual golfer)
Scott Pianowski - Yahoo! fantasy writer 
Joe Sheehan - baseball scribe of the Joe Sheehan newsletter and elsewhere
Scott Jenstad - RotoWire baseball writer and high-stakes champ
Mike Regan & Daryl Shevin - friend and former RotoWire staff contributor, respectively
Josh Ross - former RotoWire staff contributor (and league's defending champ)
Justin Green - former RotoWire staff contributor
James Smith - former RotoWire staff contributor
Adam Schefter & Kyle Soppe - ESPN Senior NFL Insider and Fantasy Sports Research Associate, respectively