Once your group decides to run a Ryder Cup format, the very next question is always the same: how do we actually split into two teams. Get this wrong and you end up with one dominant side that wins every year and a format nobody's excited about by year three. Get it right and the draft itself becomes part of the tradition, something guys look forward to almost as much as the trip.
Here are the three main ways to do it, what each one is actually good for, and how to keep it fair without sucking the fun out of it.
Snake draft
The most common approach, and for good reason. Two captains alternate picks in a snake order (1-2-2-1-1-2-2-1...) instead of a straight alternating order, so it isn't purely a first-pick advantage.
How it works: flip a coin for first pick. Captain A picks first, Captain B picks next two, Captain A picks next two, and so on, snaking back and forth until every player is on a team.
Best for: groups where the whole trip already has a rough sense of who's good, who's steady, and who's a wildcard. It rewards captains who actually know their group, which is most of the fun of it.
Common mistake: letting captains pick purely on handicap without factoring in who plays well together, who's reliable in alternate shot, and who tends to show up hungover. The best draft picks aren't always the lowest handicap.
Auction draft
Borrowed straight from fantasy football. Each captain gets a fake budget (say, 100 points) and bids on players one at a time until rosters are full.
How it works: nominate a player, captains bid points, highest bidder gets them and their budget goes down. Continue until both teams are full.
Best for: bigger groups (10+) where a straight snake draft would take too long to stay interesting, or groups that already do a fantasy draft for something else and want a familiar format. It's a genuinely fun standalone event the night before the trip starts, especially with a drink in hand.
The tradeoff: it takes longer to run and requires someone to track the budget and call out nominations. Works best with a dedicated draft night rather than trying to squeeze it into travel day.
Captain's pick by handicap tiers
The most balanced option on paper, and the best choice if your group has a wide handicap spread and you want to guarantee neither team gets stuck with all the high handicaps or all the low ones.
How it works: rank the entire group by handicap from lowest to highest. Split into tiers (say, top four, middle four, bottom four for a 12-man trip). Captains alternate picks, but only within each tier before moving to the next one.
Best for: groups with a real skill gap, or trips where balance matters more than drama. It's the least chaotic of the three, which is either a pro or a con depending on what your group actually wants out of draft night.
| Format | Best for | Time to run |
|---|---|---|
| Snake draft | Groups who know each other well | Fast, 15-20 min |
| Auction draft | Bigger groups, fantasy-style fun | Longer, best as its own event |
| Handicap tiers | Wide skill gaps, fairness first | Fast, 15-20 min |
Should captains be fixed or rotate?
Two schools of thought. Some groups keep the same two captains every year, usually whoever founded the trip, which builds its own rivalry over time. Other groups rotate the captain spot to last year's individual points leader or MVP, which gives something extra to play for during singles matches. Neither is wrong. Decide it once and write it down so it's not a debate every single year.
Make the draft its own event
Groups that get the most mileage out of this treat the draft as a real occasion, not just a five-minute logistics step. A group text thread dedicated to trash talk in the week leading up to it. Draft night at someone's house with the picks read out loud. A printed draft board. None of this is necessary, but it's almost always what people remember as fondly as the trip itself.
Keeping draft history alive
Once you've drafted a few years running, the history starts to matter almost as much as the current year. Which captain has the best draft record. Which late-round pick turned into the trip's best player three years running. Which pick everyone still gives a captain grief about. That's exactly the kind of thing that's easy to remember for a year or two and impossible to remember accurately after five.
Track your draft history automatically
See how a real trip records every draft, every captain, and every pick, year after year.