Starbitrage: Optimizing the AJGA Performance Based Entry System

The AJGA's Performance Based Entry (PBE) system offers junior golfers a pathway to gain access to high-level events based on their performance. However, gaining entry into AJGA events has become exceedingly difficult for non-exempt players. The AJGA introduced a significant change to the fully exempt system, reducing the threshold from the Top 5 last year to the Top 3 starting this season.  While this will reduce the number of fully exempt players by approximately 35%, the full effect of this change won't be realized until next season.  If anything, the change will make it even more challenging for currently non-exempt players to gain entry into events in 2025.

Understanding the nuances of star allocation can reveal significant opportunities for players to optimize their tournament decisions to get into competitive AJGA tournaments. This blog post looks at the PBE allocation across different tours and tournament types, which will hopefully prove useful to parents and juniors trying to navigate the complex junior golf landscape.

PBE Background

Stars (or PBEs—we'll use the terms interchangeably) serve as the currency for entering an AJGA tournament. Look at the Applications Received tab of any AJGA tournament that is open for registration, and you'll see the applications sorted first by any fully exempt players, then by PBEs. This can provide some insight on what the cut-off might be to get into the field. The PBEs are also used to sort the waiting list after the initial field has been set.

PBEs are accumulated over the season and remain with the player over the course of the next season. For example, players started the 2025 season with any stars they accumulated during the 2024 season and they can add to the total throughout to 2025 season.  The 2024 PBEs only drop off at the start of the 2026 season.

Stars are accumulated based on tournament performances and can be earned in AJGA and non-AJGA events.  The PBE allocation for your typical tournaments within a given category are as follows:

• AJGA Open: Top 3 Fully Exempt, Top10: 12 stars, Top 15: 8 stars, Top 25: 4 stars, Top 50% of make cut: 2 stars (Note: A typical no-cut AJGA event has around 51 players, meaning very few players ever receive 2 points. Since finishing in the Top 25 is effectively the same as finishing in the top half, earning 4 points is the most common outcome.)
• AJGA Junior All-Star and AJGA Preview:  Winner: 12 stars, Top 5: 8 stars, Top 10: 4 stars, Top 20: 2 stars, Top 50% or make cut: 1 star

Qualifiers are 18-hole AJGA events typically held the day before the tournament. In addition to filling the last six or so players in the tournament field, the AJGA award 4 stars to the medalist of an Open or Preview event, 2 stars for the top 20% (typically top 10) and 1 star for anybody in the top half of the field (typically top 25%). Junior All-star qualifiers pay out 2 PBE for a top 10% and 1 for the top half of the field.

Local events receive much less generous PBE payouts.  We'll first look at the tours played by golfers in North Texas and add additional tours around the country to this blog post over time.  The payout for their typical (non-invitational, highest age division) 36-hole tournaments are:

• North Texas PGA All-American Tour (or AAT, the highest competitive tier of the North Texas PGA section): Winner: 4 stars, Top 10% (usually top 5 or 6): 1 star
• Texas Junior Golf Tour (or TJGT, an independent tour that runs event across Texas and Oklahoma): Winner: 4 stars, Top 10% (usually top 5 or 6): 1 star
• Legends Junior Tour (or LJT, the highest level of junior competition in Texas, combining the best from both North & South Texas sections): Typically, Winner: 8 stars, Top 5: 4 stars, Top 10: 1 star

DRVN.Golf Star Score: An Analytical Framework

We analyzed tournament scores relative to course ratings (not adjusted by Junior Golf Scoreboard), final placements, and resulting PBE allocations across different tours in 2024. We group performances based on the average per round score relative to the course rating by half-stroke increments [for example, if a golfer shoots 70-72 in a tournament on a course rated 72.4, that would be -1.4 strokes below the course rating per round and this performance would be grouped in the '-1.5 bin'.].  After grouping all tournament performances, we calculated the average PBE payout for each score bin.  The table below shows some key metrics across the tours and tournament types.  While we capped the score bins at -9 on the low end and +25 at the high end, the table below concentrates on the -2.0 to +2.0 score ranges which tends to be a critical range for golfers on the cusp of moving from non-exempt to fully exempt. Of the golfers who would have lost their fully exempt status under the Top 3 criteria instead of the Top 5 criteria, 53% of their AJGA tournament scores are within these key score ranges. The complete allocation details are provided at the end of this post.

The shaded yellow section highlights the significant disparity in Star allocation between AJGA and non-AJGA tournaments for a given score bin, particularly in the Preview series. For instance, a +2.0 stroke differential performance will rarely earn a PBE star in the North Texas All-American Tour, but often earns two or more stars in a AJGA Preview event.  This is expected, as the AJGA's system is designed to provide a one-time PBE boost through the Preview series, typically at the beginning of the year, for players new to the circuit. However, for golfers who have not taken advantage of the Preview series, perhaps because they've already entered an event or maybe got into a Preview event but didn't finish in the top half, it may be extremely difficult to make up the lost ground through the local channels.

In order to quantify the relative differences in the Star allocation, we developed a metric called the DRVN.Golf Star Score.  Essentially this uses the AJGA Open event PBE payout as a benchmark (with a score of 100) and then measures other tours and tournament types relative to that, controlling for the differences in score differential distribution.  Note, for purposes of the Open benchmark, we assumed that a Top 3 Fully exempt performance was equivalent to 18 stars.

Let's take the All-American Tour again.  It's 9.3 Star Score index suggests that if golfers shot the same Differential scores in AJGA Open events, they would receive nearly 11x as many Stars (100 / 9.3 = 10.8) as they do under their existing 4 pt/1 pt PBE allocation.  Or in other words, a golfer would have to play in 11 local AAT tournaments, on average, to earn as many stars as a similar golfer playing in one AJGA event.

There are differences and implications across local tours. For instance, we see the TJGT has a higher scoring average and score distribution than the AAT, but offers a roughly 50% greater payout when adjusted for the score differences.

Other Takeaways

1. Take Advantage of AJGA Preview Events!

If there's one main takeaway from this data, it is that Preview events are generous!  They offer a payout that is 70% above that of AJGA Open events.  Again, that is likely by design. The key is to take advantage of the one-time opportunity by ensuring you are capable of shooting at least 73-74 in tournament conditions.  A bottom-half of the field performance would be a wasted opportunity, so don't rush it.

Key Notes on Preview Events:

• Designed for members without prior AJGA tournament acceptances.
• Conducted primarily in spring to help build PBE status before summer Open and Junior All-Star events.
• Entry preference is given based on graduation year, and ties are broken through random draws.
• Each player is limited to one Preview Series tournament per season, making strategic selection crucial.

2. Consider One-Day Qualifiers

One-day qualifiers offer a great chance to earn stars, even for players who do not plan to compete in the main tournament or are already in the field. Watch the qualifier calendar and deadlines closely as there may be one in your area with openings, even for non-AJGA members.  Similar to Preview events, priority into qualifiers is given to those with less playing opportunities to date and special consideration to rising seniors.  It helps to become well versed on the Open Qualifier Entry Criteria.

Key Notes on Qualifier Events:

• A top-half finish (likely shooting 75 or better) is generally required to secure stars.
• Typically the day before the start of the event, likely the same day as the tournament's practice round
• The $95 qualifier entry fee is applied toward the $295 main tournament entry fee if you qualify.

3. Be Ready for Junior All-Star Events

Junior All-Star events offer a great opportunity to earn a strong base of PBEs for current and future years. I'd surmise that the typical junior golf journey includes one year of playing Junior All-Star events, or a mix of JAS and Open events before moving up to Open events.  Like all of these AJGA opportunities, it's important not to rush in and enter a tournament before a player is ready. Players likely need to shoot 76 or better to earn at least 1 star in a JAS event.

A quick survey of the JAS qualifiers shows that nearly every qualifier field was filled by at least some players already competing in the tournament.  Trying to get into the JAS Qualifier if you're already going to the tournament is a no-brainer opportunity for an additional star or two, effectively replacing the practice round.

4. Know Your Game

When you have different options to play locally, it's beneficial to understand at the relative field strength and PBE payout schedule. The AJGA posts the PBE schedule which can be sorted by state and tour.  you likely want to double-check the PBE schedule PBE schedule prior to registering for an event. Sometimes you'll discover some oddities like the AJGA only awarding stars to the Girls division of a tournament.

It's also important to truly understand your game relative to the competition. For instance, in Texas, the Legends Tour offers a higher level of competition and PBE payouts compared to the TJGT.  The data shows that for -2.0 differential performances and better, a golfer would be better off playing in a Legends event.  For -1.5 performances and worse, the TJGT offers a better opportunity to still earn a Star.  Similar trade-offs may exist in your market.

5. Play in the U.S. Junior Qualifiers

Playing in the U.S. Junior qualifiers are a tremendously valuable experience, even above and beyond the chance of playing in the national championship.  Even if a golfer likely isn't a threat to get one of the two or three qualifying spots, they can still gain valuable experience that can carry into future years.  Plus they pay out PBEs.  The medalist receives 4 stars and there are additional allocations based on field size.  If the field size is 40 or more, the top 20% will receive 2 stars and the top half will receive 1 star.  If the field size is less than 40, then only the top half will receive one star.  There is little to no downside in trying the U.S. Junior in your area.

6. Not all AJGA Open's are Equal

Some AJGA Open events are oversubscribed with fully exempt applicants. When this occurs, they rank the applicants based on their AJGA Rolex ranking at the time of the registration deadline (note: the order they are listed on the Applications Received list is not sorted by Rolex rank, which can cause confusion).  For example, the upcoming KJ Choi event in Texas currently has 102 fully exempt applicants vying for 30 tournament spots.

Beyond that, the simple fact is that not all AJGA Open events have the same depth of field and score distribution.  Given they all have the same PBE payout and minimum 40-point Rolex distribution, there are bound to be some arbitrage opportunities.  For example, I parsed the AJGA Open category further by looking at the bottom 40 of the 87 Open's in 2024 based on the AJGA strength of field metric used to allocate Rolex points.  All of these events warranted 45 or less Rolex points, though some would've had a minimum higher than that.  A list of the events included is below.  Most of these 40 are in the middle of the summer when there are lots of competing AJGA, invitational and amateur events.

Concentrating on just the 'Open 40' events skews the score distribution into higher ranges and PBE payouts deeper.  This filter boosts the Star Score from the 100 benchmark to 116.

List of AJGA 'Open 40' events in 2024:

A Path Forward: Proposed Changes to PBE Framework

As the AJGA aims to reduce barriers to entry and tournament costs, there is an opportunity to lower travel expenses for families by offering a more equitable Star allocation to local feeder tours.  This would allow golfers to compete closer to home more often. Our Star Score framework can serve as a starting point for balancing out PBE payouts across tours to remove any regional biases that may exist.  While it's fine for the AJGA to offer beneficial payouts to its own events, an 11-to-1 ratio that exists in some local tours is likely too extreme. We propose a target Star Score of 60 for a 36-hole, feeder-tour-level competition. This would allow local players that opportunity to accumulate meaningful points locally to improve their chances of gaining entry into a AJGA event.

For example, the proposed change to the NTPGA All-American Tour star allocation below would approximate the target Star Score of 60. The allocation can vary by tour based on their strength of fields and score distribution, simply by adjusting the max payout and sliding the depth of the 2-point and 1-point allocation. This could be done on an annual basis based on analysis of the previous year's scores.

Bookmark this page and check back regularly as we continue to add local and regional tour data. If you need help with Tournament preparation and whittling your scoring average down over time, please check out Volume 2 of the Angle of Attack w/ Andrew Lewis. The first episode in that series is below.

[1/28 Update: Added STPGA Prestige Tour.  Star Score = 12.2]

[2/3 Update: Added SCPGA Tours]

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