PGA Tour 2023 - Tour Championship

[Splatt]

G’day golfers,

This is it!



We’ve made it to final event in the regular PGA Tour season; every event this season has been leading to this big final battle between the top 30 best performing players.
The FedEx cup points earned all season have led to a ranked top 30 which will then be handicapped for the final round. The number 1 ranked player will start at -10, 2nd will start at -8, 3rd will start at -7, and so on until we get to the 26th to 30th ranked players who all start at even par.
This is not my favourite part of the  Tour Championship as the handicap system seems way off. To me, it’s only players in the top 5 or so that stand any real chance, everyone else is just there for a pay day.
I get that there has to be some form of reward for finishing the season on top of the FedEx ranking, but this seems way too heavy handed to me.
What do you guys think?

For the second year in a row Scottie Scheffler has finished top of the FedEx Cup rankings and will start the Tour Championship at 10 under par. This wasn’t enough last year Scheffler last year who finished 2nd to Rory McIlroy who started in 7th position, a full 6 shots behind Scheffler.

It’s a big purse they’re playing for with the winner of the FedEx cup receiving $18 million. That’s not a bad day at the office.

The full standings for this year are below:

 

The Tour Championship is held at East Lake Golf Club, a par-70, 7,346-yard course. East Lake has held every FedEx cup Championship since 2005 and has quite the pedigree with it being the home course of Bobby Jones and the oldest golf course in the city of Atlanta.
Traditionally finishing with a par-3 over water, the club reversed the nines in 2016, with a 551 yard par-5 now the conclusion.

Field Highlights

·         Scottie Scheffler – The most consistent golfer this season by a wide margin. Scottie has played in 22 events this year and won twice, finished 2nd twice, has had 16 top-10 finishes, and has not missed a single cut. In fact, he’s only finished outside of the top-10 6 times this year. 6 times!! This is all more astonishing when you look at his putting stats.
Hopefully, Scottie can figure out the flat stick and secure the win this year.

·         Viktor Hovland – Hovland is your 2nd ranked player on the FedEx cup standings after his course record performance last week. Hovland shot a course record 61 in the final round at the BMW Championship last week to sneak the win from under Scheffler by 2 shots.
And what is Scheffler’s starting lead over Hovland? 2 shots
It’s almost too perfectly set up.
Hovland has had a great year, winning twice on Tour with 8 top-10 finishes, and like Scheffler, he also hasn’t missed a cut. Should be a good match-up between these two.
 

·         Rory McIlroy – Rory is the 3rd ranked FedEx cup player and will start at 7 under par. This is a much better start that he had last year when he came back and won. McIlroy has had an up and down year, most noticeably down during his Masters run where he missed the cut and then was absent from a mandatory event the week after. Since then, he’s only finished outside of the top 10 once in 10 events including 1 win at the Genesis Scottish Open and finishing running up at the U.S Open. It’s fair to say Rory is in form now and will give the field some trouble.

 

·         Jon Rahm – Rahm is your 4th ranked player on the FedEx cup rankings and will start at 6 under par. Rahm looked absolutely unstoppable early in the season amassing 4 wins in 9 events including 2 back-to-back at The Sentry and The American Express and winning the first major of the season at The Masters. Since then his record has been less great, but he has still had 2 runner up finishes.
 

·         Lucas Glover – Glover is your 5th ranked player and will start at 5 under par. Glover is the current pseudo-poster child for LAB golf when after a switch to LAB he season completely turned around. At the start of the season his average finish was a T-50 and above finish or a missed cut, since switching to LAB he’s had 5 top-10 finishes in the last 7 events including 2 wins. Hopefully he can carry that momentum in to the final event this week.

 

 

For those in the MGS Pick ‘Em tournament, this will be the last week so makes sure you use the rest of your picks on decent players.

I’ll be taking a break from doing these during the fall season events, I’ll see you all back for the 2024 Sentry Tournament of Champions.

 

SPLATT

[GolfSpy_APH]

@Splatt truly cannot thank you enough for all these writeups! They have been fantastic and really well done. 

Appreciate all your dedication to posting these and the efforts taken to putting them up each week.

Going to be a fun weekend of golf and while I'm basically out on all my fantasy championships it's been a really fun season!

[Byrnzee]

@Splatt you're the real MVP for these writeups. Love the insight and simplified explanation along with your personal takes for the week.

I'd be curious if you or anyone else would like to see a change in the Tour Championship format going forward. Dan Rapaport from Barstool/Foreplay (formerly Golf Digest) had a suggestion to make part of the Tour Championship a match play bracket. I think that would be a really interesting way to separate the event from the rest of the schedule and see the best in the world battle it out head-to-head for an unfathomable amount of money.

I believe his suggestion would be to keep the staggered scoring on Thursday and Friday, then create the bracket from the top scores for the weekend.

Would love to get your thoughts or other suggestions for how to make this event more exciting than it has been.

[GolfSpy_APH]

5 hours ago, Byrnzee said:

@Splatt you're the real MVP for these writeups. Love the insight and simplified explanation along with your personal takes for the week.

I'd be curious if you or anyone else would like to see a change in the Tour Championship format going forward. Dan Rapaport from Barstool/Foreplay (formerly Golf Digest) had a suggestion to make part of the Tour Championship a match play bracket. I think that would be a really interesting way to separate the event from the rest of the schedule and see the best in the world battle it out head-to-head for an unfathomable amount of money.

I believe his suggestion would be to keep the staggered scoring on Thursday and Friday, then create the bracket from the top scores for the weekend.

Would love to get your thoughts or other suggestions for how to make this event more exciting than it has been.

I like it. They do so many changes and tweaks why not? Then have the final match play winner or top 4 go head to head against the LIV top player or team... lets say at Cape Kidnappers in NZ! 

[Splatt]

6 hours ago, Byrnzee said:

@Splatt you're the real MVP for these writeups. Love the insight and simplified explanation along with your personal takes for the week.

I'd be curious if you or anyone else would like to see a change in the Tour Championship format going forward. Dan Rapaport from Barstool/Foreplay (formerly Golf Digest) had a suggestion to make part of the Tour Championship a match play bracket. I think that would be a really interesting way to separate the event from the rest of the schedule and see the best in the world battle it out head-to-head for an unfathomable amount of money.

I believe his suggestion would be to keep the staggered scoring on Thursday and Friday, then create the bracket from the top scores for the weekend.

Would love to get your thoughts or other suggestions for how to make this event more exciting than it has been.

I love that idea. You could have 1st v 30th, 2nd v 29th, and so on.

That seems fairer

[TotalLoss12]

21 hours ago, Byrnzee said:

@Splatt you're the real MVP for these writeups. Love the insight and simplified explanation along with your personal takes for the week.

I'd be curious if you or anyone else would like to see a change in the Tour Championship format going forward. Dan Rapaport from Barstool/Foreplay (formerly Golf Digest) had a suggestion to make part of the Tour Championship a match play bracket. I think that would be a really interesting way to separate the event from the rest of the schedule and see the best in the world battle it out head-to-head for an unfathomable amount of money.

I believe his suggestion would be to keep the staggered scoring on Thursday and Friday, then create the bracket from the top scores for the weekend.

Would love to get your thoughts or other suggestions for how to make this event more exciting than it has been.

I’d love to see everyone start at zero once the playoffs start. If you make the top 70 then everything is back to zero and anyone can win. Then I wouldn’t mind seeing a match play bracket determine the winner for the Tour Championship. It would also be a great warmup for the Ryder or presidents cup as well. As for the match play bracket you could seed everyone from their standings after the first two playoff events and give the two top seeds a bye then it will be five days of matches. Personally I think that would be much more exciting than a staggered start like they do now. 

[KB13]

1 hour ago, TotalLoss12 said:

I’d love to see everyone start at zero once the playoffs start. If you make the top 70 then everything is back to zero and anyone can win. Then I wouldn’t mind seeing a match play bracket determine the winner for the Tour Championship. It would also be a great warmup for the Ryder or presidents cup as well. As for the match play bracket you could seed everyone from their standings after the first two playoff events and give the two top seeds a bye then it will be five days of matches. Personally I think that would be much more exciting than a staggered start like they do now. 

I love the match play format. I can understand wanting to give the person that is at the top an advantage but a 10 shot lead seems, a bit much IMO. If Scottie putts just 3% better, he's unbeatable with that kind of lead. 

[TotalLoss12]

5 minutes ago, KB13 said:

I love the match play format. I can understand wanting to give the person that is at the top an advantage but a 10 shot lead seems, a bit much IMO. If Scottie putts just 3% better, he's unbeatable with that kind of lead. 

You are absolutely correct. Also why have 70 guys make the playoffs if they really don’t have a shot at winning the Tour Championship. I wouldn’t mind doing a huge bracket like March Madness. Let them play the first 2 events for seeding purposes then have 7 day match play Tour Championship. Imagine the upsets you could have. 

[cnosil]

39 minutes ago, KB13 said:

I love the match play format. I can understand wanting to give the person that is at the top an advantage but a 10 shot lead seems, a bit much IMO. If Scottie putts just 3% better, he's unbeatable with that kind of lead. 

He really only has a 2 shot lead.   Also, Players have come from behind by as much as 10 strokes in the final round to win an event, the bottom 4 players have 4 rounds to overcome the 10 strokes they are behind.   
 

you are correct though, if Scheffler could improve his putting skills he could probably be as or more dominant than Tiger was in his prime.  Probably not going to happen though.   

[Splatt]

Remember how I said it's really only the top 5 or 6 that have a chance?

You can disregard that. Morikawa started 24th

[GolfSpy_APH]

I actually kinda forgot that yesterday was Thursday. Need to find the highlights pack and maybe check in to see how the team is doing. 

Glad to see Morikawa finding form. He has had a solid year, but just not the the same expectations I think many had and going into the Ryder Cup he will need to be playing well. 

[snoopy79]

I saw Morikawa’s first few hole on ESPN+ and pegged him for a good round. He just looked like he was in that zone with almost every shot. 
 

I still think Rory is going to go out and shoot a low round before Sunday and be in the conversation for a title fight but it all depends on his back. Hope he has it sorted. 

Edited August 25, 2023 by snoopy79

[fixyurdivot]

On 8/23/2023 at 4:54 AM, Splatt said:

G’day golfers,

This is it!



We’ve made it to final event in the regular PGA Tour season; every event this season has been leading to this big final battle between the top 30 best performing players.
The FedEx cup points earned all season have led to a ranked top 30 which will then be handicapped for the final round. The number 1 ranked player will start at -10, 2nd will start at -8, 3rd will start at -7, and so on until we get to the 26th to 30th ranked players who all start at even par.
This is not my favourite part of the  Tour Championship as the handicap system seems way off. To me, it’s only players in the top 5 or so that stand any real chance, everyone else is just there for a pay day.
I get that there has to be some form of reward for finishing the season on top of the FedEx ranking, but this seems way too heavy handed to me.
What do you guys think?

For the second year in a row Scottie Scheffler has finished top of the FedEx Cup rankings and will start the Tour Championship at 10 under par. This wasn’t enough last year Scheffler last year who finished 2nd to Rory McIlroy who started in 7th position, a full 6 shots behind Scheffler.

It’s a big purse they’re playing for with the winner of the FedEx cup receiving $18 million. That’s not a bad day at the office.

The full standings for this year are below:

 

The Tour Championship is held at East Lake Golf Club, a par-70, 7,346-yard course. East Lake has held every FedEx cup Championship since 2005 and has quite the pedigree with it being the home course of Bobby Jones and the oldest golf course in the city of Atlanta.
Traditionally finishing with a par-3 over water, the club reversed the nines in 2016, with a 551 yard par-5 now the conclusion.

Field Highlights

·         Scottie Scheffler – The most consistent golfer this season by a wide margin. Scottie has played in 22 events this year and won twice, finished 2nd twice, has had 16 top-10 finishes, and has not missed a single cut. In fact, he’s only finished outside of the top-10 6 times this year. 6 times!! This is all more astonishing when you look at his putting stats.
Hopefully, Scottie can figure out the flat stick and secure the win this year.

·         Viktor Hovland – Hovland is your 2nd ranked player on the FedEx cup standings after his course record performance last week. Hovland shot a course record 61 in the final round at the BMW Championship last week to sneak the win from under Scheffler by 2 shots.
And what is Scheffler’s starting lead over Hovland? 2 shots
It’s almost too perfectly set up.
Hovland has had a great year, winning twice on Tour with 8 top-10 finishes, and like Scheffler, he also hasn’t missed a cut. Should be a good match-up between these two.
 

·         Rory McIlroy – Rory is the 3rd ranked FedEx cup player and will start at 7 under par. This is a much better start that he had last year when he came back and won. McIlroy has had an up and down year, most noticeably down during his Masters run where he missed the cut and then was absent from a mandatory event the week after. Since then, he’s only finished outside of the top 10 once in 10 events including 1 win at the Genesis Scottish Open and finishing running up at the U.S Open. It’s fair to say Rory is in form now and will give the field some trouble.

 

·         Jon Rahm – Rahm is your 4th ranked player on the FedEx cup rankings and will start at 6 under par. Rahm looked absolutely unstoppable early in the season amassing 4 wins in 9 events including 2 back-to-back at The Sentry and The American Express and winning the first major of the season at The Masters. Since then his record has been less great, but he has still had 2 runner up finishes.
 

·         Lucas Glover – Glover is your 5th ranked player and will start at 5 under par. Glover is the current pseudo-poster child for LAB golf when after a switch to LAB he season completely turned around. At the start of the season his average finish was a T-50 and above finish or a missed cut, since switching to LAB he’s had 5 top-10 finishes in the last 7 events including 2 wins. Hopefully he can carry that momentum in to the final event this week.

 

 

For those in the MGS Pick ‘Em tournament, this will be the last week so makes sure you use the rest of your picks on decent players.

I’ll be taking a break from doing these during the fall season events, I’ll see you all back for the 2024 Sentry Tournament of Champions.

 

SPLATT

Hey Splatt, regardless of how this season ends, I just wanted to give you a big shout out on doing such a stellar job doing the weekly tour thread . 

I guess at this point, I'm hoping Morikowa wins as he was on my FTx team and, although he and Homa showed up so late in the season that I couldn't make the playoff cut line, I harbor no ill feelings .

[GolfSpy_APH]

14 minutes ago, fixyurdivot said:

Hey Splatt, regardless of how this season ends, I just wanted to give you a big shout out on doing such a stellar job doing the weekly tour thread . 

I guess at this point, I'm hoping Morikowa wins as he was on my FTx team and, although he and Homa showed up so late in the season that I couldn't make the playoff cut line, I harbor no ill feelings .

Appreciate all the work you've done in the past @fixyurdivot! Tour threads and following wouldn't be what they are today without the years of posts you've done before!

[fixyurdivot]

Wow, the manner in which Scottie goes after the ball with driver ... I'm not sure he could prevent that slide step if he wanted too.  Not an outcome that would be popular, but it would be cool to see Harman win.  My gut tells me this is going to be a photo finish horse race.

[fixyurdivot]

If length of drives is any indication that a player if "feeling it", Scheffler is feeling it. 369 yards on #14 .

[ballhawk]

To me, it really looks like the combination of all that heat for the entire week, coupled with playing 3 weeks straight has just sucked the mental and physical strength of most of the players. VH however seems to be on another level and if the heat doesn't get to him today, it should be an somewhat easy Sunday finish for him.  

[Shapotomous]

I feel better about my bunker game after seeing Conners thin one waaaay over the green.  Its just a reminder this game really is hard and the difference between success and failure is measured in something less than  millimeters.

[GolfSpy_APH]

Haven't watched much... Well and other than YouTube highlights. 

Kinda in Ryder cup mode, but will hopefully be a good end to the season and onto a more normal year next year. 

[RockerFCC]

That was some dominant stuff there! And Xander threw everything he had at him, just amazing clutch play, By Both. Well Done Mr. Hovland, Well Done! Massive win to say the least. Oh, and... Nothing like a Cool 18 Mil to make your day LOL.

Edited August 27, 2023 by RockerFCC

[Josh Parker]

What a final round by the last group!  Those two played lights out. 

[Rickp]

Congratulations to Victor Hovland and Xander both out in a great performance!

@Splatt great job, love your posts!  

[Splatt]

Congrats to Hovland.

Finished with 3 birdies, no one was gunna catch him.

What a clinic!

[GolfSpy_APH]

2 hours ago, Splatt said:

Congrats to Hovland.

Finished with 3 birdies, no one was gunna catch him.

What a clinic!

Thanks again @Splatt for doing these all season! 

Enjoy the break and looking forward to next year!

[Donn lost in San Diego]

I'd name Victor Golfer of the Year.  Scottie needs to putt a lot better, not just once every 4 or 5 tournaments.  Rahm was great at the start of the year but was middle of the pack a lot afterwards, too many times in the woods.  But Victor ran away from the best of the best who were all all primed and ready.  I think he shocked the field in his wins so much that everybody else was smiles outside but unnerved on the inside.  Victor's demeanor also is impressive, he stays focussed and loose.  I wonder if he can play like this for a few years.  He is candidate for "the next Jack or Tiger".  Time will tell.

[Fairways Scotland]

The FedEx Cup and its handicap system for the Tour Championship have been subjects of discussion and debate among both players and golf enthusiasts. Your perspective is valid, and it's a topic that has sparked differing opinions.

The handicap system, as you mentioned, heavily rewards the top-ranked players, giving them a significant advantage going into the final event. This can make it challenging for those ranked lower to compete for the title. It's true that the system aims to reward consistency over the season, but some argue that it may not always lead to the most competitive final event.

On the other hand, the handicap system can create excitement by giving a player like Scottie Scheffler, who performed consistently well throughout the season, a head start and the opportunity to secure a win. It adds a unique element to the Tour Championship.

Ultimately, the handicap system is a way to strike a balance between rewarding season-long performance and creating an exciting and competitive final event. Opinions on it can vary widely, and it's a topic that continues to be discussed and evaluated by golf fans and officials.

It will be interesting to see how the system evolves in the future and whether any adjustments are made to address concerns like the one you've raised.

Edited September 19, 2023 by Fairways Scotland