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ATLANTA – Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele have been the two best golfers in the world in 2024, head and shoulders above their competition. But neither of their decorated resumes includes a FedEx Cup.
That’s something both men will try to change this week at the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club. The winner after 72 holes will claim the season-long championship and an eye-popping $25 million prize.
For the sixth straight year, the tournament will feature a staggered scoring start based on the FedEx Cup points standings. Thursday’s final pairing of Scheffler and Schauffele will tee off at 10 under and 8 under par, respectively.
Hideki Matsuyama of Japan (starting at 7 under) and Keegan Bradley (6 under) moved into third and fourth place by winning the first two playoff events, the FedEx St. Jude Championship and the BMW Championship, respectively. The 30-man field wraps up with Justin Thomas and four other players starting from even par.
Scheffler has spent plenty of time with Schauffele this summer, from competing at the Olympics together to being paired up at each FedEx Cup playoff event due to their positions atop the standings. Schauffele won two majors, the PGA Championship and Open Championship, while Scheffler took home the Masters and five other tournaments.
“I’m just grateful for the year that I’ve had,” Scheffler, the gold-medal winner at the Paris Olympics, said. “I’m grateful for Xander’s year. I’m looking forward to competing for the FedEx Cup with (29) other guys. I think it’s something that we should just enjoy instead of focusing on the comparisons all the time.”
Schauffele has established himself as an East Lake expert. He won the 2017 Tour Championship, before the playoff format changed, and he’s been a runner-up three times in the past five years while shooting the lowest gross score twice. His Tour Championship scoring average is a remarkable 66.96, the best in tournament history.
But that was the old East Lake. The course underwent a restoration in the 12 months since the most recent Tour Championship, led by architect Andrew Green, and Schauffele and his peers have not been shy about describing East Lake as a brand-new golf course.
“Literally the bunkers are new, the grasses are new in the fairways, the greens are new, the grass on the greens are new, the runouts are different, the slopes are different,” Schauffele said. “Whatever record I had is the past. I have no memory or anything really on any hole to go off of, not even a tree I could aim at that I used to aim at. It’s just that different.”
Among the key holes that have changed is the par-5 finishing hole. The first half of the fairway was regraded so that essentially any second shot a player has will be on a downhill lie. The nearby lake was redeveloped to jut in between the fairways, and the green is new.
“I’m interested to see how they play 14 and 18,” Green told reporters. “18 is in their head already. I can tell already. But if you hit it down there, you’re going to end up with a lie that you just have to judge.”
The regular-season points leader has not won the FedEx Cup since Jordan Spieth in 2015. Last year, Norway’s Viktor Hovland won the BMW Championship to move into the No. 2 spot for the Tour Championship and overtook Scheffler for the cup.
This year, another Scandinavian up-and-comer is lurking in fifth place at 5 under. Ludvig Aberg, 24, hasn’t won in 2024 but has contended consistently.
“I think it’s a cool format,” Aberg said. .”.. It emphasizes I’m playing well in these three tournaments, and if you play well, you get rewarded. So yeah, I like obviously being here, I like being a part of it, and really looking forward to a cool week.”
Three-time FedEx Cup champion Rory McIlroy of Northern Ireland starts the week 4 under along with Sam Burns, Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa and Wyndham Clark.
-Adam Zielonka, Field Level Media
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