The PGA Tour got it’s final tournament of the season underway earlier this morning at East Lake Golf Club near Atlanta, Georgia with the top 30 players on Tour competing for the massive purse that has exceeded $40,000,000. This is the final stage of the FedEx Cup Playoffs which has cut down the field each week from 70 players to 50 players to the final 30. Throughout the years, the FedEx Cup championship has seen the purse size continuously ballooning to an almost unfathomable prize pool which will see the winner of the weekend take home north of $10,000,000. To make under seven-digits in prize money, you would have to finish all the way down at ninth, which would still earn you $900,000.
The Tour has altered their format for the championship from what it was years ago. They used to stagger the starting scores for players based on where they placed for the final week. For example, if they had kept that format this year, World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler would start the tournament with a few stroke lead ahead of the second place player, but now they will start each player at even-par like a normal tournament and let them play it out throughout the four days. With the staggered start, it was a way for players who had more success throughout the season to start with a leg up on the field. If you won more tournaments and had higher finishes, you started the Tour Championship higher up on the leaderboard. The Tour did away with that format this season for a plethora of different reasons, but now it makes it easier to understand for the average viewer.
Scottie Scheffler comes into the tournament as the prohibitive favorite with the shortest odds since Tiger Woods was in his prime, Scheffler sitting at +160 to win outright before today. Scheffler has been utterly dominant this year, adding a few more majors to his resume while also winning consistently in other signature events. He hit a Tiger-esque chip-in on the 17th hole a week ago at the BMW Championship that would secure yet another victory for Scheffler, and furthering the comparisons made to Woods.
East Lake Golf Club underwent a full renovation after last year’s championship, as the team dug shovels into the ground almost minutes after the final putt was made on the 72nd hole. They restructured a few holes and renovated every single green on the course leading up to the tournament. The tournament committee has publicly stated that with the new greens and newly constructed holes, they are setting up the course for the players to score and post a lot of birdies. The thinking behind this is to give all 30 players a relatively open shot at winning this weekend, which is the true goal of this tournament.
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