RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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The 2026 PGA Tour postseason comes to an end this weekend at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, where the top 30 in the FedEx Cup standings will battle for the Tour Championship. Will a first-time winner emerge, as Tommy Fleetwood did a year ago, or will a stalwart like Rory McIlroy charge to the top of the leaderboard by week's end?
Under the revised format, introduced last year, players do not begin with staggered starting strokes based on their position in the standings. Instead, the 30 players in the field all begin on level footing; the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup champion will be decided over 72 holes of play.
That means every player from No. 1 Scottie Scheffler to No. 30 Ryan Fox begins the tournament with the same opportunity as the PGA Tour has already awarded those who finished higher in the standings with bonus payouts after the BMW Championship -- $23 million in total for Scheffler.
Fleetwood took advantage of the new system last year, winning the Tour Championship and claiming the FedEx Cup crown in his first career PGA Tour victory. This year, there are a handful of players looking to follow suit and make the Tour Championship their first win of the season with Fleetwood, Ludvig Åberg, Xander Schauffele, Si Woo Kim and Sam Burns all beginning the week in the top 12 despite not yet lifting a trophy in 2026.
On the other end of the spectrum, last week's winner, Wyndham Clark, will enter the Tour Championship alongside Matt Fitzpatrick and Chris Gotterup, tied for the most wins on the year with three. All three men hope to break the tie in a big way in Atlanta.
Players will go off in 15 pairings each day at East Lake with a later 11 a.m. ET start time on Thursday, given the limited 30-player field at the Tour Championship. Among the marquee pairings for the first round are McIlroy and Xander Schauffele (12:54 p.m.), who both enter the Tour Championship outside the top 10 in the FedEx Cup standings. Fleetwood and Åberg will tee off after them at 1:12 p.m. as the top two in the standings, Scheffler and Fitzpatrick, going off in the last group at 2 p.m.
11 a.m. -- Tom Kim, Ryan Fox 11:12 a.m. -- Justin Rose, Adam Scott 11:24 a.m. -- Robert MacIntyre, Viktor Hovland 11:36 a.m. -- Alex Smalley, Alex Fitzpatrick 11:48 a.m. -- Min Woo Lee, J.J. Spaun 12:06 p.m. -- Patrick Cantlay, Kristoffer Reitan 12:18 p.m. -- Ryan Gerard, Gary Woodland 12:30 p.m. -- Akshay Bhatia, Hideki Matsuyama 12:42 p.m. -- Jacob Bridgeman, Russell Henley 12:54 p.m. -- Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele 1:12 p.m. -- Tommy Fleetwood, Ludvig Åberg 1:24 p.m. -- Collin Morikawa, Sam Burns 1:36 p.m. -- Si Woo Kim, Chris Gotterup 1:48 p.m. -- Wyndham Clark, Cameron Young 2 p.m. -- Scottie Scheffler, Matt Fitzpatrick
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