I had a dozen entries into Underdog’s “The Scramble,” a 28-event, seven-month PGA Tour best ball tournament.
First (of four) rounds ended Sunday, and I got five of my 12 entries through to the next round, easily beating the expected two out of 12 (more on this in a bit).
One of the contests I won, I won by the narrowest of margins.
I scored 5002.10 points to win.
Second place scored … 5001.60.
I won by a half-point. I guess I just wanted it more, who can say.
Obviously – obviously! – luck enters the chat when you win anything, nevermind by less than a point. We see it all the time in regular DFS, where the difference between a million-dollar winner and a $100,000 winner is often as small as the same half-point.
But my goodness – a half-point out of 5000+ points is … maddening. I won by .01%.
A game of inches. pic.twitter.com/X9sxABX4VR
— Jeff Edelstein (@jeffedelstein) February 17, 2025
Some perspective: If this were a 100-meter sprint, I would’ve won by one centimeter.
If this were a race that took an hour, I won by .36 seconds.
If this were a marathon, I would’ve won by 14 feet.
More comparisons? Yes, because I am enjoying this.
I weigh about 200 pounds. If I lost .02 pounds – roughly the weight of two nickels – that would be the same percentage difference.
If this contest were a gallon of gas, I won by less than a drop.
If this were a normal 2,000 calorie diet, I won by half of an M&M.
But let’s get bigger. In fact, let’s get – literally – galaxy brain on this.
The age of the universe is 13.8 billion years. I won by 1.38 million years, which sounds like a lot, but when you crunch the numbers, I won by one day – assuming the contest took 27 years.
Jupiter’s Great Red Spot is 10,000 miles wide – I won by a mile.
Earth’s orbital velocity is 67,000 miles; I won by how fast a person is going when they are jogging.
As a result of all this, if I win the tournament – it’s $50K to first – I’d like to offer the person I bested, MBruno296 the same .01% in prize money, which comes out to … oh man, it’s only $5. Tell you what, I’ll be a sport about it and throw you $100. Reach out to me if I win.
And, if I win, I probably owe Pat Mayo a few bucks, as I had no intention of drafting any teams in this contest until I saw a Twitter post of his that mentioned how people were drafting for this contest all wrong. Mayo then listed his rankings, which I followed to a T.
https://t.co/5w3axfpMbR pic.twitter.com/Krfqgmw88q
— Pat Mayo (@ThePME) February 17, 2025
As a result, I had my finest best ball first round in history.
Now all I need to do is win Round 2. And Round 3. And Round 4. There are 9,396 people left in the tournament, which means …
… which means I have a – wait for it – yes, a .01% chance of winning the whole thing.
Math, amirte?