For the first time in four years, Scottie Scheffler will start the Tour Championship just like everybody else.
Gone are starting strokes, a fixture at the PGA Tour’s FedExCup playoff finale at East Lake since 2019, and back in effect is a 72-hole, stroke-play tournament that will see the winner on Sunday also crowned the FedExCup champion. Scheffler had begun each of the past three Tour Championships at 10 under, two shots clear of the field, but he and the rest of the 30-man field enter the week at level par.
“I guess no more sandbagging for me at the end of the year,” Scheffler said. “I was not a huge fan of the starting strokes format. I was a fan of the points format (where the Tour Championship winner wasn’t necessarily the FedExCup champ), but I understand why people wanted to move away from that with FedEx being a huge sponsor and having to give out two trophies at the end of the week and explaining the season long race. This to me is a much simpler format to end the year.”
Scheffler had the most dominant season of his career from a FedExCup points standpoint, his victory last week at the BMW Championship pushing him to 7,456 points, more than double that of second-ranked Rory McIlroy, who accumulated 3,687 points.
And yet, that matters little, as No. 30 Akshay Bhatia, and his 1,409 points, also earned a spot at East Lake.
Scheffler is OK with a scenario in which Bhatia, with no wins this season, captures the Tour Championship and the $10 million FedExCup title.
“To be one of the 30 best players on our Tour and make it to this tournament is an extreme accomplishment, and one of the things people may pick apart is, well, some guys can win the season long race without winning a tournament until the Tour Championship,” Scheffler said. “I would argue making the Tour Championship without winning a tournament is a pretty cool accomplishment, not in the sense of not winning, but you have to put together a really consistent, great season in order to qualify for the Tour Championship, especially without winning.
“When it comes to this week, we all start even par, and it’s time to go chase what you want. In order to win tournaments, you have to play good golf at the right time, and if you want to win our season long race, you have to play really good golf at the end of the season.”
Unlike previous years, Scheffler has already been somewhat compensated for his dominance this season, one in which he’s won five tournaments, including The Open. He’s collected $23 million in bonus money before the remaining $40 million pot is divvied out on Sunday evening.
His record at East Lake, however, isn’t great, as he’s got just one FedExCup title to show for all those two-stroke head starts.
In 2022, he lost by a stroke to Rory McIlroy.
In 2023, he ended up 16 shots back of Viktor Hovland.
Finally, last year, he won by four.
“I think it was Phil Jackson who said, ‘You’re only a success at the time you’re performing a successful act,’ and it just irked me so bad finishing off the year where guys were like, ‘Hey, great playing, I’m sorry about how it ended,’” Scheffler explained. “It’s like, you know what, man, I won the Masters this year, won a few other tournaments, it was a pretty good year.
“So going into 2024, coming into East Lake, [caddie] Teddy [Scott] brought up a good point. He’s like, ‘Hey, man, it’s tough enough sleeping on a lead.’ He’s like, ‘You’ve been sleeping on the lead for this golf tournament since February.’ I was leading the entire year in the FedExCup, and it all comes down to a four-day tournament on a golf course that I hadn’t really played great on. … It was one of the hardest tournaments I had to play just because I had been sleeping on the lead for six or seven months. It’s a weird feeling…
“I think we’re in a much better place now.”
