Golf Calcutta: The More You Know, The More You Win

A golf Calcutta is essentially just an auction. The items being bid on are golfers, or in many cases for local tournaments, golf teams. 

In the Calcutta I participate in every year, the tournament host auctions off every team in each flight. Bidding starts at $50 per team and there are always a couple teams that sell for over $1,000 each year.

Let’s say, for simplicity’s sake, that all 12 teams in a flight sell for $100 in the Calcutta. The prize pool for that flight is $1,200. If the Calcutta pays the top three places using a 70-20-10 payout, the owner of the winning team would cash $840, the owner of the second-place team would cash $240, and the owner of the third place team would cash $120.

That’s not too complicated, right?

If you want to run your own golf Calcutta, you can do it for a tournament that the bidders are playing in themselves, or you could organize a Calcutta for a professional tournament to level-up the viewing experience. It’s the same process either way. Here’s how to do it.

Whether it’s for a tournament you’re running, or one you’re watching, you must begin with an auction. Get the bidders together for a live auction and run down the list of teams or players for sale. Put all of the money from the auction into a prize pool to be awarded after the tournament.

This might seem like a granular detail, but it’s not.

I can't stress enough how important it is to document the results of the Calcutta, or auction, before the on-course action starts. The last thing you want is a dispute over a large sum of money with no paper trail to resolve it.

After the Calcutta but before the golf, send all the participants a document that contains the following:

• Which bidders “own” which golfers/teams
• How much each bidder paid for their golfer/team
• Total prize money to be paid
• Total amount to be paid to each finishing position (1st, 2nd, etc.)

This step will save you from some potentially heated disagreements and can help correct any errors you may have made in tallying the results before those mistakes become problematic.

Based on the results of the tournament, pay out the Calcutta winners. If you followed steps 1 and 2, this should be easy. All you have to do is use the prize pool you collected in step 1, the tournament results, and the document you created in step 2 to see who cashed in the Calcutta, and how much.

And that, my friends, is how you run a golf Calcutta.

There’s one quick but important note about Calcuttas that you should know.

After you buy a team or player in a golf Calcutta, it’s customary to offer them to buy back half of that ownership after the auction. This accomplishes a couple of things.

First, it incentivizes the team or player to play well, which helps everybody. Second, it reduces your financial risk if they don’t perform.

It’s not gambling if you know you’re going to win, right?

Well, there’s no way to know you’re going to win, and a Calcutta is absolutely gambling, but nonetheless, there are still strategies you can use to increase your odds of leaving the Calcutta happy.

Having been through a half-dozen golf Calcuttas now, these are my top recommendations for how to stack the odds in your favor at a golf Calcutta.

In my experience, the biggest winners at the Calcutta always seem to be the people who got a team that nobody else wanted for the minimum bid, only to watch that team take first place and earn a huge payday for their “owner.”

The moral of the story is don’t be afraid to buy low.

Going into a Calcutta, you should have a set budget that you absolutely don’t exceed, and it should be an amount you’re comfortable with never seeing again – afterall, this is a gambling activity.

The more teams you can split that money between, however, the better chance you have of actually seeing that money again. Putting all your eggs in one basket in any sort of golf wager is risky business, because golf fields are deep and anything can happen out on the golf course.

If your Calcutta is part of a golf tournament that you’re also competing in – in my opinion, the best ones are – I can’t discourage bidding up your own team strongly enough. Here’s why.

It’s customary – perhaps as common as tipping at a restaurant in the United States – to offer a team to buy half the “ownership” after the Calcutta. If you bid up your own team and still don’t win the auction, you’ve only increased your price for a buy-back.

However, if you let your team sell for a lower amount then buy half afterwards, your investment is much lower. Considering you’re all but guaranteed to have the opportunity to own half your team after the Calcutta, there’s really no upside to bidding up your own team.

I had no idea what a golf Calcutta was the first time I participated in one. It only took about two minutes of that first one to realize that the Calcutta was actually the life-blood of the tournament. It’s what gets people excited and it’s also where the real money can be won – and lost.

If you’re comfortable with some side-wagers, a Calcutta is an exciting way to level-up any golf event. Just make sure to stick to a budget that you’re comfortable with, and let the good times roll.