The PGA Tour reaches its thrilling climax this week as it returns to East Lake Golf Club for the 2024 Tour Championship. Originally designed by Tom Bendelow in 1908 and undergoing several redesigns in the ensuing years by Donald Ross, George Cobb, Rees Jones and Andrew Green, East Lake has served as the permanent home of the Tour Championship since 2004 and will play as a Par 71, 7,490 yard layout this week. The winner of the Tour Championship will ultimately win the FedEx Cup and a cool $25,000,000.
East Lake will play host to the 30 best players on tour this season, which means you need to bring your A-game if you want to find success. For starters, you’re going to want to be an excellent ball striker to find success. With narrow fairways, accuracy from the tee will be the first step in setting yourself up for success. From there, great control of your irons is going to be vital to setting up your scoring chances. With challenging green complexes and lots of green side hazards, elite iron players will take advantage of these situations and pounce on those who are struggling. Obviously, making birdies is going to be important, but avoiding the large numbers is more important. With the field using starter strokes this week, the leader automatically starts at -10. In the five events played under this format, three of the winners have finished at -21, which is only the equivalence of -11 if won by the leader (two of those three were won by the leader coming in). So by no means a scoring fest compared to other tournaments, the player who is best control of all facets of their game will quickly rise to the top, regardless of their starting position. And for a wild card, the weather is expected be in the 90s for all four rounds. With those types of conditions, the course will be playing firmer and faster than usual. If that’s the case, par may very well be a good score as the tournament progresses. Give an additional advantage to players who thrive in sweltering conditions. With heat like this, maintaining composure can be more difficult. The player who can keep their emotions in check and ultimately embrace the weather will most certainly maintain an edge on their competitors.
The Tour Championship was first held in 1987 and has produced an impressive list of winners through the years, including Tom Watson, Curtis Strange, Tom Kite, Jodie Mudd, Craig Stadler, Paul Azinger, Jim Gallagher Jr., Mark McCumber, Billy Mayfair, Tom Lehman, David Duval, Hal Sutton, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Mike Weir, Vijay Singh, Chad Campbell, Retief Goosen, Bart Bryant, Adam Scott, Camilo Villegas, Jim Furyk, Bill Haas, Brandt Snedeker, Henrik Stenson, Billy Horschel, Jordan Spieth, Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Dustin Johnson, Patrick Cantlay and Viktor Hovland, just to name a few.
Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy share the record for most wins in this event, each finding victory here three times. Phil Mickelson is the only other multiple time winner of this event, with two Tour Championship wins.
The 18 hole scoring record for the Wyndham Championship is 60, which was achieved by Zach Johnson during the third round in 2007. The 72 hole scoring record is 257 (-23), which was achieved by Tiger Woods during his victory in 2007. The 72 hole scoring record to par is 261 (-27), which was achieved by Viktor Hovland during his victory here last year.
Last year’s edition was won by Viktor Hovland, who shot a final round 63 to hold off Xander Schauffele by five strokes. Wyndham Clark finished in third, a mere eleven strokes back, Rory McIlroy finished in fourth, thirteen strokes back and Patrick Cantlay rounded out the top five, fourteen strokes back,
Don’t get me wrong, Sahith Theegala has had a solid season, earning seven top 10’s and 10 top 25’s in 23 starts. But since the playoffs have started, his game has been non-existent, finishing T-46 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship and 48th at the BMW Championship. Fortunately for Theegala, with only 30 players teeing it up this week, he’s guaranteed to have his best finish of the playoffs this week. East Lake has always been a course that favors great ball strikers and excellent putters and frankly, Theegala just hasn’t been cutting the mustard of late, losing strokes on approach in each of his last five starts and losing strokes on the greens in six of his last 11 starts. Theegala finished in 28th place in his lone start at the Tour Championship in 2022. With his recent form, I predict that another finish outside the top 20 is calling Theegala’s name.
In his third full-time campaign on the PGA Tour, Aaron Rai finally had that breakthrough season that we knew was just lurking over the horizon, picking up his maiden victory at the Wyndham Championship just three weeks ago to go along with six top 10’s and 12 top 25’s in 24 starts. Rai is absolutely lethal when it comes to ball striking, ranking 1st in Driving Accuracy Percentage and 3rd in Greens in Regulation Percentage, to go along with ranking 6th in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green and 7th in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green. With stats like that, why doesn’t Rai win more? The fault can be placed squarely on inconsistency on the greens. Rai has lost strokes putting in six of his last 12 starts, yet still managed to finish inside the top 20 in two of those starts and inside the top 40 in four of this starts. Alternatively, when he gains strokes putting, he’s right up there with the best on tour. In his last six starts where Rai has gained strokes on the greens, he has one win, four top 5’s, five top 10’s and no finishes outside the top 20. Because he ranks 28th in the FedEx Cup Standings, Rai will start the week at even par, ten strokes off the pace. Winning from that deep isn’t even an option. A top 15 finish feels like a realistic expectation and a solid way to close out an excellent 2024 for Rai.
Patrick Cantlay has been lurking in the shadows all year long. With four top 10’s, 11 top 25’s and just one missed cut in 18 starts, Cantlay is hoping to close out his 2024 campaign in a big way. Cantlay has seemingly found the secret to success at East Lake of late, with a win in 2021 and three straight finishes inside the top 10. His season long stats are par for the course, as Cantlay is gaining strokes in each of the six major Strokes Gained categories. Lately, Cantlay has been inching closer to picking up that first victory since the 2022 BMW Championship, with five straight top 25 finishes of late, including a pair of top 15’s in the first two playoff events. In those starts, he has for the most part gained strokes in all of the major categories. Just hasn’t had that closer’s luck. He isn’t playing bad, others are just playing better. Winless on tour now for over two years, Cantlay’s time is coming. A player of his caliber is too talented to go winless for much longer. I don’t see it happen this week, but I predict that he will capitalize on his recent form and his past success in this event to close out his season with a top 10 finish.
Ranked second in the Official World Golf ranking and second in the FedEx Cup standings, Xander Schauffele is making a hard push for Player of the Year, with two wins (both of which were majors), 14 top 10’s, 19 top 25’s and zero missed cuts in 20 starts. Schauffele has not finished outside of the top 15 in a tour event since April and is firing on all cylinders of late, finish 1, T-9, T-2 and T-5 in his last four starts. There are very few holes in Schauffele’s game right now, ranking inside the top 10 in five of the six major Strokes Gained categories and is one of the best iron players on the planet right now, ranking 5th in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green and 15th in Greens in Regulation Percentage. Most importantly, Schauffele is a stud at East Lake, winning in his debut in 2017 and picking up three additional runner-up finishes and never finishing worse than T-7 in seven career Tour Championship starts. He’ll start two strokes behind Scottie Scheffler to start the event, but I predict that Schauffele will hunt him down and collect the biggest payday of his career with a second career victory at the Tour Championship and hoist the FedEx Cup for the very first time!
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