The 2025 PGA Tour season comes to an end with the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta where someone will take home the FedEx Cup.
The top 30 players in the FedEx Cup standings will tee it up at East Lake where the trophy — and a whole bunch of money — has been given out for all 17 years of the playoffs’ existence.
This year will be slightly different than the last few years. Gone are the starting strokes awarded to players by their rank entering the Tour Championship. Instead, every player in the 30-man field will start at even par in a 72-hole stroke-play race to the finish.
Tour Championship Changes: No More Starting Strokes
The changes, or “enhancements” as the Tour labeled them, were announced in May, midway through the regular season. The change has gotten a public sign-off from 2024 champion Scottie Scheffler.
“I was not a fan of (starting strokes),” he told reporters at a pre-tournament press conference.” I didn’t think it was a good way to end the year, for a variety of reasons. I’m much more happy with this format. I think having a real — a good golf tournament on a really good golf course to finish off our season is extremely important, and I think when you look at it this week, we’re going to have a difficult test, a good test to golf to finish off the year the right way.”
Coincidentally, Scheffler wound up being the player most hurt by the format change. Under the previous format, Scheffler — who owns a massive lead in the FedEx Cup standings — would have started the tournament at 10-under. Rory McIlroy, who trails Scheffler at No. 2 in the standings, would have started at 9-under. The scoring would have went down the standings like that until it got to even par.
Obviously, that has meant that someone could win the Tour Championship without shooting the lowest score for the weekend. That’s exactly what happened last season when Scheffler won the Championship and FedEx Cup, but Collin Morikawa actually had the best four-round golf score.
Given a chance to reflect and with a huge lead going into the tournament, Scheffler still thinks the Tour made the right call.
Changes to Tour Championship Purse
By winning in 2024, Scheffler took home a whopping $25 million. This year, the winner of the Tour Championship will make “only” $10 million. So, what gives?
As part of the changes to the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup playoffs, the Tour adjusted how it distributed playoff money. The top 10 players entering the playoffs split $20 million, with the leader (Scheffler) getting $10 million of that. Then, there was another split of $23 million after the BMW Championship with the No. 1 player making $5 million.
So, for Scheffler specifically, he comes into the week having already won $15 million in FedEx Cup playoff prize money. Additionally, he won the Comcast Business Top 10, which earned him $8 million. That means he’s already won $23 million on top of his entire season of on-course earnings before even putting a tee in the ground at East Lake. Obviously, if he can win the Tour Championship — where he’s a massive favorite — he’ll walk away with another $10 million on top of that.
If all of that seems kind of confusing or convoluted, fear not: Even more changes are coming soon. The Tour also recently announced a new Future Competition Committee, chaired by Tiger Woods, that will look at ways to improve and simplify the PGA Tour’s schedule and format in the coming years.
Like Heavy Sports’s content? Be sure to follow us.
This article was originally published on Heavy Sports
The post Tour Championship Format Change: Why All Players Are Even to Start Final Event appeared first on Heavy Sports.