TOUR Championship: Tips, predictions and odds

Scottie Scheffler will start the TOUR Championship with a two-stroke advantage, but bet365 are offering markets on both the tournament winner and the best 72-hole score.

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TOUR Championship Tips

GROSS Winner: Xander Schauffele (9/2)
NET Winner: Xander Schauffele (11/5)
GROSS Sleeper: Justin Thomas (28/1)
NET Sleeper: Collin Morikawa (20/1)

East Lake Golf Club course guide

Located five miles south of downtown Atlanta, East Lake Golf Club is the host course for the season-ending TOUR Championship for the 21st consecutive season.

Originally designed by Tom Bendelow in 1903, Donald Ross arrived in 1913 to redesign the course where Bobby Jones learned to play the game.

After hosting the event in 1998, 2000, and 2002, East Lake has served as host since 2004. Following the 2023 TOUR Championship, Andrew Green was hired to restore the course to the golden age of Ross’s design, based on aerial photographs and notes discovered from 1949.

Pre-Restoration	Post-Restoration
Greens	Greens
Miniverde UltraDwarf	TifEagle Bermuda
5,619 sq ft	6,238 sq ft
Fairways	Fairways
24 acres of Meyer Zoysia	29 acres of Zorro Zoysia
Rough	Rough
90 acres	70 acres
Tifway 419 Bermuda	Tifway 419 Bermuda
2.5 inches	2.5 inches
Hazards	Hazards
74 bunkers	78 bunkers
5 water penalty areas	5 water penalty areas
6 holes in play	8 holes in play
	with creek restoration
	on No. 6 and No. 7

Among the biggest changes, the property did not change the routing of the holes. The fairways, which usually did not deviate from the sprinkler lines, now sweep and curl throughout the property. The greens used to have two complexes on each hole, one for summer and one for cooler months, have combined to form larger targets with more locations for pin placements and no longer tilt exclusively from back to front.

TOUR Championship preview

Beginning as the Nabisco Championship in 1987, the TOUR Championship teed it up at East Lake for the first time in 1998.

The TOUR Championship evolved into the FedExCup Playoffs finale beginning in 2007 and continuing through today.

Before 2019, the player with the most total FedExCup points, regardless of the finish at the TOUR Championship, was awarded the FedExCup. The 2019 edition debuted the Starting Strokes metric. The winner with the lowest total, including the Starting Strokes, was crowned FedExCup Playoffs champion.

Viktor Hovland, the reigning event champion, posted 19-under-par 261 over 72 holes to match the gross record total on Bermuda greens. The Norwegian’s five-shot victory set the record after the shift to Bermuda greens in 2008.

Rory McIlroy, the only player to win this event three times, the most in history, has done so twice since 2019. Trailing by six shots entering the final round in 2022, the four-time major champion set the mark for the largest comeback in the Starting Strokes format.

Tiger Woods is the only other player to win this event twice and is the oldest player to win (age 43).

The 2017 edition saw Xander Schauffele win the tournament, but Justin Thomas won the FedExCup Playoffs points race. Schauffele is the only rookie winner and only debut winner. The Californian matched Hovland’s 19-under-par gross total last season to tie the tournament scoring record post 2013

In 2015, Jordan Spieth (who did not qualify) became the youngest winner at 22.

The lowest round on Bermuda greens is 61, set by Collin Morikawa in Round 1 in 2023.

No player has successfully defended the FedExCup Playoffs title or won the TOUR Championship in successive seasons.

There has never been a winner who made the TOUR Championship their maiden voyage.

The winner will pocket $25 million of the $100 million bonus pool and earn a five-year exemption on TOUR.

Players to consider: Without Starting Strokes

Scottie Scheffler (9/4): Maybe the third time will be the charm! The Texan will lead the field at 10-under before Round 1 begins for the third consecutive season. The previous two attempts saw him finish one behind McIlroy in 2022 and 16 behind Hovland last year. The six-time winner this season, not including his gold medal from Paris, has one last chapter to write.

Xander Schauffele (9/2): The 2017 winner has never won the FedExCup Playoffs, but he’s been close. Finishing second or T2 in three of seven visits, he’s never posted a round above 70 in 28 loops. Sitting just two shots behind Scheffler in Starting Strokes will not bother him.

Rory McIlroy (10/1): If finishing tied for last in Memphis was the wake-up call, responding with T11 in Denver probably wasn’t the alarm he wanted to hear. Nobody in the field has more reps here, and newly shifted fairways and greens will increase his focus. Sitting six shots adrift to start Round 1, he knows he will have to floor it again.

Collin Morikawa (16/1): The two-time major champion, who has been hitting it great for most of the spring and summer, enjoys chewing up fairways and greens. Unfamiliar, new greens should help balance the field, but not many will find more fairways. Woods is the only winner of the TOUR Championship who did NOT win during the season. Morikawa has not won in 2024.

Justin Thomas (28/1): A bogey-free 68 last Sunday qualified him for the finale at East Lake, barely. Starting 10 shots off the lead and not automatically qualified for the Presidents Cup, he can save his season with a big weekend at East Lake.

Starting Strokes are assigned to all 30 players based on their points earned from January through the BMW Championship (net).