The Regular season is over and the FedEx Cup playoffs are here. The Tour Championship is the third leg of the three-event playoff stretch for the PGA TOUR which will feature the top 50 players in the FedEx Cup standings battling it out for a huge prize purse at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, GA.

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To recap, the FedEx Cup's three-event stretch works like this.

• (last week) FedEx St. Jude: 70-man field (only the top 50 in points move to the next event)
   
• (this week) BMW Championship: 50-man field (top 50 in points after FedEx St. Jude)
   
• (next week) Tour Championship: 30-man field with staggered handicap start (top 30 in points after BMW Championship)

Last week at the BMW Championship we saw the field get cut down to 30 players. Keegan Bradley managed to hold off Adam Scott and hard-charging Sam Burns, who we had touted in the weekly best bets article at +3500. The top 10 with Burns still hit, and with Taylor Pendrith also delivering a place, we managed to squeak out some profit nonetheless.

Entering this week, the top five players in the FedEx Cup standings will look like this.

1. Scottie Scheffler (-10)
2. Xander Schauffele (-8)
3. Hideki Matsuayama (-7)
4. Keegan Bradley (-6)
5. Ludvig Aberg (-5)

The unique format of the Tour Championship means that all players will start at different handicap levels, with leader Scottie Scheffler beginning the event at 10-under par and the rest of the 30-man field starting somewhere between 8-under par and even par.

Since this event changed to a handicap-style start in 2019, we have seen the winner come from a starting position of 10 under par twice, 8 under par once, 5 under par once, and 4 under par once.

For betting this week, I’ll be looking at a variety of markets (gross score and positional bets) and will have a full betting card as always in the Wednesday article. We bounced back to a degree last week and the betting column is still up over 35 units since the Travelers.

Also, with football on the horizon, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention our FREE NFL Bet Tracker (now that the NFL season is just around the corner). We’ve started posting plays in it already and I just posted another De’Von Achane future in it today which I think offers some great value via the FantasyLife+ projections. 

Today I’ll go over the course and also spotlight one player for betting. 

Let’s dive in and get our Tour Championship week started!

PGA Tour Championship 2024 Course Preview

• East Lake Golf Club – Atlanta, GA
• Par: 71, 7,490 yards
• Greens: TifEagle Bermuda
• Rough: TifEagle Bermuda
• Design: Donald Ross
• Defending Champion: Viktor Hovland

East Lake Golf Club is a Donald Ross-designed venue that has hosted the Tour Championship since the FedEx Cup playoffs were introduced back in 2007. The venue has undergone extensive renovations for 2024, undertaken by Andrew Green.

East Lake used to play as a longer par 70, with tighter fairways, thick rough, and somewhat firm greens. Now it will play as a Par 71, with somewhat wider fairways, but with more water and potentially tougher-to-hit and even firmer greens. The green themselves have added a bit of size and been restored more to their original structure. Donald Ross-designed venues typically have larger green structures and an appearance of openness, so this looks like a welcome change and certainly makes the course look better from a visual standpoint. 

Many holes have been redone at East Lake and have been given a full transformation. I won’t go into a hole-by-hole recap as it’s not necessarily super beneficial for betting but the 8th hole has been turned into a risk/reward par 4 with water in play off the tee, the par 3 9th has been lengthed to 250+ yards and plays over water, and the 14th hole has been turned into a par 5 and lengthed considerably (and is where most of the extra yardage comes into play).

Other holes have also been given small adjustments off the tee or around the green and, overall, should make East Lake a more challenging environment. 

Here is how East Lake member Stewart Cink described the extensive renovations.

“The opening is pretty inviting. But the penalty, obviously, is missing left and water. Right is a dicey angle out of the rough and the greens are really firm because they’re new. You’re going to be asked to hit a good shot if you go for it but the reward is going to be pretty large.”

With equal measures of give and take newly built into the place, tough to say what the overall effect will be on scoring this week. “The fairways are easier to hit, but the greens are probably more difficult to hit,” Cink said.

“For it being new turf, they grew a lot of rough. It’s high. The rough is going to be challenging. And coming out of the rough you don’t have any backstop effect on the greens.”

East Lake had started to become a bit a little obsolete as, last season, Viktor Hovland won at -27 (-19 gross score), which is the lowest winning score at this event since the handicap format started. The renovations could help keep scores somewhat higher and a winning score likely closer to 20 under par. The wider fairways added water and sand, and the addition of more risk/reward approach shots may align the venue more with another Ross gem in Pinehurst #2, which hosted the US Open in June.

Even though East Lake features more water, traditional sand, and traditional rough, it does share some similarities with Pinehurst #2, which is also quite wide open off the tee but contains some wicked around-the-green structures that were expanded during the renovations in the early 2010s. At Pinehurst, players were also exposed to firm greens where higher ball flights ended up being very beneficial. That seems like it will be the case again this week on what is now quite a long course, where extra firm (aka new) greens and rough should make things a lot more difficult for players.

It’s hard to give an exact breakdown of each hole, but I would guess fairway finding at East Lake won’t be a huge problem. The course is longer now and players with good length may be able to take a more aggressive line off the tee with the added fairway wideness. However, approach play should still be key this week. Firm greens and tougher around the green structures mean that anyone not finding GIR consistently will likely be exposing themselves to big numbers on the regular.

So how should we approach East Lake for betting?

Ideally, from a stat perspective, we’re looking for players who have a little distance off the tee, but also are elite ball strikers with some penchant for scrambling and playing out of the sand. Great tee-to-green play is a must this week.

We’d want our golfer to have the following: 

• Elite approach games and higher ball flights
• Players who have thrived on tougher/longer courses with consistent off-the-tee games
• Consistency around the greens and a good record putting on Bermuda and on Donald Ross designs

Combining and weighing most of these stats into a model that targeted the last 24 rounds this week gave me the following players as my top 10:

1. Scottie Scheffler
2. Xander Schauffele
3. Ludvig Aberg
4. Rory McIlroy
5. Tony Finau
6. Viktor Hovland
7. Aaron Rai
8. Hideki Matsuyama
9. Collin Morikawa
10. Shane Lowry

Strong ball striking should be key this week for staying away from big numbers. Here are the top 10 players in GIR’s gained stats over the last 24 rounds. 

1. Scottie Scheffler
2. Xander Schauffele
3. Aaron Rai
4. Viktor Hovland
5. Ludvig Aberg
6. Sepp Straka
7. Billy Horschel
8. Tony Finau 
9. Rory McIlroy
10. Akshay Bhatia

This course features poa/bent greens and plays as a long par 71 at over 7,400 yards. Here are the top players in strokes gained total stats on Par 71 courses that measure over 7,400 yards with Bermuda greens over the last 50 rounds. 

1. Rory McIlroy
2. Jason Day
3. Justin Thomas
4. Xander Schauffele
5. Viktor Hovland
6. Sungjae Im
7. Hideki Matsuyama
8. Byeong Hun An
9. Wyndham Clark
10. Patrick Cantlay

Betting Facts and Trends for the 2024 Tour Championship

Below are the previous odds (week of) of the past five winners of the Tour Championship. A couple of notes about these odds below:

• In 2023, Viktor Hovland started at -8 and won the week prior at the BMW
• In 2022, Rory McIlroy started at -4 and finished T8 at the BMW
• In 2021 Patrick Cantlay started at -10 and won the BMW 
• In 2020, Dustin Johnson started at -10 and 1st and 2nd at the first two playoff events
• In 2019, Rory McIlroy started at -5 and finished T19 at the BMW

Below are the previous five winners of the Tour Championship and their pre-event odds from the beginning of the week of the event.

Early Bet for the 2024 PGA Tour Championship

Hideki Matsuyama 

Depending on which week you bet on Hideki Matsuyama, he’s either your favorite or least favorite golfer right now. That’s because the 2021 Masters winner won the first leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs at pretty decent odds, but then proceeded to withdraw (low back) from second-leg of the playoffs last week in Denver, after shooting a first-round 67 (-5). Considering that the winning score for the week was -12, it’s not inconceivable (or even hard to imagine) that Matsuyama was there at the end had he just finished the four rounds.

The withdrawal now brings into question his status for the Tour Championship which starts this Thursday. There is no doubt that Matsuyama (who did get a couple of extra days to prepare) is a risky play, but the injury factor has also created a nice opportunity with his current odds sitting at +1400 (Fanduel). I would also argue that the risk of another withdrawal, potentially isn’t as large as it would seem on the surface. 

Thanks to his win at the St. Jude, Matsuyama had lots of comfort room last week from a seeding perspective. Even after his withdrawal he still managed to enter East Lake 3rd in the FedEx Cup standings. However, this week is a different story. With so much money on the line (1st gets 25M) it behooves everyone who got a spot in the field to try and gut it out for all four rounds.

Matsuyama is also no stranger to quick bouncebacks. The BMW was technically his first WD of 2024 but in past seasons he’s never hesitated to leave an event already in play if he feels even a slight discomfort. In 2022 he withdrew from the Valero Texas Open the week before the Masters and promptly finished T14 at Augusta the next week. In 2021 he withdrew from the Rocket Mortgage and then finished T2 (playoff loss) in his next start a few weeks later.

Matsuyama has never won this event but he has finished top 5 at East Lake twice (2016 and 2018) and has a solid good record on other Donald Ross courses, including Pinehurst #2 where he finished 6th this June. He also enters having gained 5.7 strokes on approach and 8.2 strokes putting (on another course with Bermuda greens) in his last full start.

With Scottie Scheffler also somewhat disinterested in this format I don’t think it’s a bad idea to take a few flyers on players a few shots back this season. With Matsuyama still well within striking distance and playing solid golf, it’s a good time to buy into a little injury fear and back him to win his first-ever Tour Championship.