Fantasy Golf: Am I bored or what?

In order to expand my fantasy sports horizons, I decided to take on a new fantasy sport. However, since football and hockey were already closed on Yahoo Fantasy Sports, and baseball far from opening, I took the sport advertised on the front page: golf.

I'm not a big fan of golf, and I don't know a lot of players, but I can at least manage to stay awake while my dad's watching golf at 2 AM (and somehow managing to outlast him). The nice thing about fantasy golf is that it's not as stressful because there aren't a whole lot of transactions aside from setting your lineup for a tournament, and tournaments don't happen all that often. It's a very relaxed and laid-back game, much like its real-life equivalent.

Here's how the game works. The fantasy golf season begins with the first tournament of the calendar year: the Mercedes-Benz Championships from January 4-7. You select your lineup from among the A-list, B-list, and C-list. There's no drafting so a player can be "owned" by any number of teams. You get to pick 2 from the A-list (e.g., Tiger Woods), 4 from the B-list (e.g., Chris DiMarco), and 2 from the C-list (e.g., Michael Campbell). From among your players, you pick 1 from A, 2 from B, and 1 from C; these are your "starters".

Scoring in the fantasy golf game is done at the conclusion of each round. The player who has the lowest score in the round nets 20 points for his fantasy owners. The other players score 2 fewer points for each stroke they are behind the leader (e.g., 18 if 1 stroke behind, 16 if 2 strokes behind), to a minimum of zero. Of course, only the starters for a team can accumulate points. In between rounds, you can change your starters so you can replace ineffective players or those who don't make the cut after the 2nd round, but you can't change the players on your team mid-tournament. Also, much like in fantasy NBA, a player can only play for your team for a maximum of 10 tournaments, which means that you can't have Tiger Woods playing for you the whole year. You can find out who's playing in a tournament a few days before it starts.

Here's the lineup I've picked for the Mercedes-Benz Championship (opening round starters are in italics):

• A-list: Tiger Woods, Jim Furyk
• B-list: Sergio Garcia, Chris DiMarco, Robert Allenby, Justin Rose
• C-list: Trevor Immelman, Michael Campbell
  

I may have to change my lineup once the tournament participants are known. But for now, I just picked the players who either made the most money last year, or whose names I recognize.

Sign up now and let's play golf! Give it up for my false enthusiasm!