The snake draft is a time-honored tradition in fantasy sports. It seems democratic, it seems fair, and it gives everyone a chance to pick. So why doesn't it work for your weekly golf game?
The Problem with Snake Drafts
When you're drafting a fantasy football team, you're selecting from a pool of hundreds of players you'll never actually play with. Your choices are based on statistics and projections. It's an intellectual exercise.
Golf team selection is different. You're picking from your friends. Your playing partners. The guys you've been teaming up with (or against) for years.
Here's what really happens in a golf snake draft:
1. Hurt Feelings Before You Even Tee Off
Sure, the best players usually get picked first. But when it comes down to two guys with similar games, captains pick their buddies. Everyone sees it happen. The guy who gets passed over knows exactly why—and now he's starting the round already annoyed.
Repeat this process week after week and you can see how things start to build up.
2. Everyone Knows Everyone's Game
Unlike fantasy sports where you're working from statistics, you know exactly how Steve plays. You know he always chokes on the back nine. You know Mike is money inside 10 feet.
Smart captains exploit this knowledge, drafting players whose skills complement each other rather than simply picking by handicap order. Again, not necessarily bad—but not "fair" either.
3. The Sandbagger Problem
If you use handicaps to determine draft order, you've just created an incentive to sandbag. The higher your handicap, the earlier you get picked. Some players—consciously or not—will game this system.
4. It Takes Forever
A snake draft somehow eats up half an hour. Every selection sparks a debate. Someone argues they should've gone higher. Someone else makes a crack about last week's choke job. Captains take forever weighing their options while everyone else checks their phones.
What should be a 2-minute process turns into pre-round drama that sets the wrong tone for the day.
What's the Alternative?
The best team selection removes human bias entirely. Instead of picks based on friendship or strategy, teams should be generated by an algorithm that:
- Uses actual recent performance, not self-reported handicaps
- Balances teams based on current form, not historical data
- Removes all human bias from the equation
- Takes seconds, not half an hour
This is exactly what Big Team Golf does. The app tracks each player's scores and birdies over their last 20 rounds, calculates a weighting, and generates balanced teams instantly.
No drafts. No arguments. No accusations of favoritism.
But What About Strategy?
Some golfers love the strategy of draft day. They enjoy the mental chess of building a team.
We get it. But here's the thing: the strategy isn't about creating fair teams. It's about creating an advantageous team. If you're really good at snake drafts, you're probably really good at tilting things in your favor.
For everyone who loses that chess match, the experience is frustrating. They know they got out-drafted, and the round hasn't even started yet.
When the algorithm picks teams, everyone starts on equal footing. The competition happens on the course, not before it.
Try It For Your Next Game
If your group is still doing snake drafts, consider trying Big Team Golf for your next round. You might be surprised how much smoother things go—and how much more competitive the game feels when teams are actually balanced.
Download Big Team Golf and see the difference for yourself.