Every year, golfers arrive at the FedEx St. Jude Championship and field questions about the PGA Tour’s current format for the FedEx Cup playoffs. Every year, World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and others indicate they would like to see some tweaks.
But after a regular season that saw Scheffler pile up wins at the Masters, the Players Championship and four other signature events, his criticism may be heard louder than ever before.
Those opinions haven’t been enough to enact major changes to the format, which will see the playoff field whittled from 70 to 50 to 30 players in the next three weeks. The first leg, the St. Jude, tees off Thursday at TPC Southwind in Memphis.
As a refresher: Once the top 30 players in FedEx Cup points make it to the Tour Championship (the final event of the playoffs), they are slotted into a staggered-scoring start. As it stands now, Scheffler will open that tournament with only a two-shot head start over Xander Schauffele even though Scheffler owns nearly 2,000 more points.
“Yeah, I mean, I talked about it the last few years. I think it’s silly,” Scheffler said. “You can’t call it a season-long race and have it come down to one tournament. Hypothetically we get to (the Tour Championship) and my neck flares up and it doesn’t heal the way it did at The Players, I finish 30th in the FedEx Cup because I had to withdraw from the last tournament? Is that really the season-long race? No. It is what it is.”
Scheffler comes to Memphis off the high of winning Olympic gold two weeks ago at Le Golf National outside Paris, another boost to the 28-year-old’s growing resume.
He doesn’t have much to worry about this week, but a few big names have to sweat out cracking the top 50 to qualify for next week’s BMW Championship.
Jordan Spieth (currently No. 63) is one, thanks to a very underwhelming season. Another is Viktor Hovland of Norway, who won last year’s FedEx Cup but is just 57th in points right now.
“I try not to think about my FedEx rank or all that stuff so much this week,” Hovland said. “I’ve obviously been vocal about me not playing very well this year, so that’s kind of what I’m focusing on, just trying to get the horse back on the track and work on the things that I need to work on to play good golf, and then all the other stuff, that will work out if I take care of that stuff.”
The PGA Tour made this event the first playoff leg in 2022, and playing in Tennessee in mid-August has led to sweltering conditions where surprises can happen. The event required a playoff each of the past three years. In 2023, veteran Lucas Glover won 2,000 FedEx Cup points as champion and rocketed up the standings.
Glover only qualified for last year’s playoffs by winning the Wyndham Championship the prior week. This year’s Wyndham winner, Englishman Aaron Rai, opens the week 25th in FedEx Cup points.
Third in the standings is Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy, who was unable to parlay stellar golf into a major championship win this year but is likely to lean on his experience as a three-time FedEx Cup champion to end his season on a bright note.
“I think when the bulk of the season has come and gone and you’ve got this opportunity of three weeks to really, I guess, flip the script a little bit or change the narrative on what that season means, I think that’s a motivating factor, and part of the reason that I’ve probably played well in the playoffs for the last three years,” McIlroy said.
–Field Level Media