Golf is followed differently from every other sport here. A tournament is a large field of players against one course, spread over three or four days, so the questions are always the same: who is leading right now, and what is on next week. The leaderboard answers the first and the schedule the second. Both read ESPN's public data feed.
The leaderboard page
The leaderboard shows one tournament per tour: the one in play or, between events, the latest one the data feed carries. Across the top there is a button for each tour that has an event on the board. The PGA Tour, the LPGA, the DP World Tour and the Champions Tour can all appear, but only the tours with an event in the feed at that moment do. Three counters give the number of players on the board, the number of tours available and the status of the event: Live, Final or Upcoming. A finished tournament stays on the board, marked Final, until the feed moves on to the next one.
The table has one row per player: the position, the name, one column per round with the strokes taken, and a Total against par, with totals under par highlighted in green. The number of round columns follows the event, so a 54-hole event shows three. Here is how to read a row:
- Position: the order of the rows. Players with the same total are listed next to each other, so check the Total column before assuming a gap between neighbors.
- R1 to R4: the strokes taken in each round, not the score to par. On a par-72 course, a 68 is four under.
- Total: the score to par over the rounds played. A minus sign is under par, so -5 is five under; E is even par; +2 is two over.
- Missed the cut: players who did not make the weekend stay on the board below the others, with only two rounds filled in.
The tour schedule page
The schedule has a button for each tour that has a published calendar: the PGA Tour, the LPGA, the DP World Tour and the Champions Tour. The counters show the tournaments on the chosen tour, the number of tours and the number of months the season spans. Tournaments are grouped by month, each with its dates (UTC dates) and the course under the name. The schedule is about when and where; the leaderboard is where the scores are.
The Champions Tour is the PGA Tour's circuit for players aged 50 and over, and most of its events are played over 54 holes rather than 72. That is why its leaderboard usually shows three round columns where the other tours show four.
Stroke play, the cut and playoffs
A standard tour event is stroke play over 72 holes, four rounds of 18, and the lowest total wins. After 36 holes the field is cut. The cut is a number of players plus anyone tied with the last of them, so the score that makes it changes from event to event:
- Full-field PGA Tour events: the top 65 and ties.
- LPGA full-field events: the top 65 and ties since 2023, when the line was cut from 70.
- DP World Tour: generally the top 65 and ties.
- The majors set their own lines: the Masters keeps the top 50 and ties, the U.S. Open the top 60 and ties, and the PGA Championship and The Open the top 70 and ties.
Everyone tied on the line plays on, so the weekend field can be larger than the nominal number. On the leaderboard page, in an event that has a cut, the line is easy to find: it sits where the third-round cells start to be blank.
A tie for first after 72 holes goes to a playoff. Regular PGA Tour and DP World Tour events use sudden death, replaying holes until one player wins one outright. The majors are not all the same: the Masters is sudden death, while the U.S. Open counts a two-hole aggregate and the PGA Championship and The Open a three-hole aggregate, each followed by sudden death if the players are still level. Our study of major championship playoffs has the history of each format.
Men's golf has four majors, the Masters, the PGA Championship, the U.S. Open and The Open. The LPGA has five: the Chevron Championship, the U.S. Women's Open, the Women's PGA Championship, the Evian Championship and the Women's Open. They appear on the schedule like any other tournament.
Related reading
- Golf major playoffs: each major's format, the longest playoffs and the records.
- How often the 54-hole leader wins a major: how the size of the lead going into Sunday matters.
- What score wins a major: winning scores, cut lines and margins since 2000.
The golf blog holds the rest. Nothing on the leaderboard or the schedule is simulated or predicted, because a leaderboard is a record of strokes taken. How the simulators work for the leagues that have one is explained on the methodology page.
Free, with no account. There is nothing to enter on these pages, so nothing is stored.