Following an exciting regular season, the PGA Tour enters a three-tournament postseason, the 2023 FedEx Cup Playoffs, that will conclude in a massive Tour Championship where the majority of the grand total $75 million purse dished out to golfers. In fact, the $18 million top prize is the second-largest payout on the PGA Tour this season, matching the Masters and just behind the U.S. Open.
This year’s playoffs will look a bit different, and that had a significant effect on last week’s Wyndham Championship. Only 70 golfers advanced to the first round of the playoffs — the FedEx St. Jude Championship — as opposed to 125 in prior years. That means golfers like Adam Scott (16 consecutive playoffs) and Justin Thomas (eight) will be on the outside looking in this year.
Still, there’s plenty of star power in the field as Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy enter the playoffs as the top three in the FedEx Cup standings; theyare also the three favorites to win this year’s playoffs. For Rahm and Scheffler, a FedEx Cup win would be their first, while McIlroy is seeking his fourth.
For everyone involved, there will be a ton of money and plenty of accolades at stake over the next three weeks. Let’s take a closer look at what to expect from this year’s festivities.
2023 FedEx Cup Playoffs schedule
|
FedEx St. Jude Championship |
Aug. 10-13 |
Memphis, Tenn. |
TPC Southwind |
70 |
|
BMW Championship |
Aug. 17-20 |
Olympia Fields, Ill. |
Olympia Fields |
50 |
|
Tour Championship |
Aug. 24-27 |
Atlanta, Ga. |
East Lake Golf Club |
30 |
The top 70 in the FedEx Cup standings, via points accumulated throughout the year, will play in the St. Jude Championship this week.
All three events are 72-hole, stroke-play tournaments, though the fields gradually get smaller as the playoffs roll on. The points change, too, as everything is quadrupled. During regular season events, most winners receive 500 FedEx Cup points for finishing first at tournaments (in a handful of events, 600 points went to first place). The winners of the first two FedEx Cup Playoffs events will instead receive 2,000 points each. The point boost goes for every slot on the leaderboard: 300 for second becomes 1,200 and so on.Â
Only four golfers — Rahm, Scheffler, McIlroy and Max Homa — surpassed the 2,000-point total during the entire regular season, which means the FedEx Cup standings can shift quite a bit — especially for the winners of the first two events — over the next few weeks. Winners are disproportionately rewarded and deservedly so given this is the postseason.
This provides the opportunity for golfers to go on a hot streak and rocket up the FedEx Cup standings. Regardless of what else happens, the first two playoff winners will be in great spots entering the finale, the Tour Championship at East Lake. Similar to other sports, now that the postseason has begun, almost anything can happen.
The top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings after the FedEx St. Jude Championship move on to the BMW Championship. Then the top 30 after that move on to the Tour Championship.
2023 FedEx Cup standings
Scheffler and Rahm are having extraordinary seasons. They rank No. 1 and No. 2 on the all-time single season money list at $19.1 million and $16.3 million, respectively. Those numbers will only go up from there as the first two playoff events have $20 million purses.
Here’s a look at the top 10 going into the FedEx St. Jude Championship.
|
1 |
Jon Rahm (3,320) |
16 |
Xander Schauffele (1,406) |
|
2 |
Scottie Scheffler (3,146) |
17 |
Tyrell Hatton (1,381) |
|
3 |
Rory McIlroy (2,304) |
18 |
Si Woo Kim (1,372) |
|
4 |
Max Homa (2,128) |
19 |
Sam Burns (1,335) |
|
5 |
Wyndham Clark (1,944) |
20 |
Russell Henley (1,296) |
|
6 |
Brian Harman (1,827) |
21 |
Emiliano Grillo (1,275) |
|
7 |
Viktor Hovland (1,795) |
22 |
Collin Morikawa (1,246) |
|
8 |
Keegan Bradley (1,774) |
23 |
Kurt Kitayama (1,216) |
|
9 |
Rickie Fowler (1,732) |
24 |
Adam Schenk (1,213) |
| 10 | Tony Finau (1,655) | 25 | Taylor Moore (1,193) |
|
11 |
Jason Day (1,506) |
26 |
Tommy Fleetwood (1,184) |
| 12 | Nick Taylor (1,463) | 27 | Denny McCarthy (1,179) |
| 13 | Patrick Cantlay (1,443) | 28 | Chris Kirk (1,161) |
| 14 | Tom Kim (1,422) | 29 | Seamus Power (1,133) |
| 15 | Sepp Straka (1,413) | 30 | Corey Conners (1,103) |
Even though anything can happen over the next three weeks, players are still rewarded for what they did in the regular season. The lead Rahm (1,016 points over third) and Scheffler (842 points over third) have built will be difficult to chip away if those two perform well over the first two events. For example, let’s say Finau wins the first event and gets 2,000 points. That moves him to 3,655 and into first place … unless Rahm finishes seventh or better or Scheffler finishes in the top four (which he seems to do every week). And we’re talking about one of the players ranked highest in the entire standings.
Rahm and Scheffler are in a great spot to jump into the top two spots at the Tour Championship, where they would start at -10 and -8, respectively, and receive a huge head start on winning the first FedEx Cup of their careers. For Rahm, it would cap a four-win season that includes the Masters. For Scheffler, it would touch off one of the great ball-striking seasons in history that has resulted in victories at both the Phoenix Open and Players Championship. For either, it would be emblematic of the quality of golf they have played for the last seven months as the 2022-23 PGA Tour season begins to wind down.
2023 Tour Championship format
Heading into the Tour Championship inside the top five or top 10 in the FedEx Cup standings is important because of how scoring is dispersed. Whoever is first in the FedEx Cup standings after the BMW Championship starts the Tour Championship at 10 under, and the event is played under normal scoring conditions from there. Second starts at 8 under and so on (see full numbers below).Â
With so much money at stake (again, $18 million for first place), those margins become more meaningful than even a normal week. The eventual winners of the four FedEx Cups played under this format have all started in the top seven at the Tour Championship.
- 1st: -10
- 2nd: -8
- 3rd: -7
- 4th: -6
- 5th: -5
- 6th-10th: -4
- 11th-15th: -3
- 16th-20th: -2
- 21st-25th: -1
- 26th-30th: E
2023 FedEx Cup Playoffs purse, prize money
2023 St. Jude Championship purse, prize money
- 1st: $3.6 million
- 2nd: $2.2 million
- 3rd: $1.4 million
- 4th: $960,000
- 5th: $800,000
- 6th: $720,000
- 7th: $670,000
- 8th: $620,000
- 9th: $580,000
- 10th: $540,000
2023 BMW Championship purse, prize money
2023 Tour Championship purse, prize money
The numbers are startling for the finale. The winner of the Tour Championship receive $18 million. If you just make into the final FedEx Cup Playoff event, you’re guaranteed $500,000. Here’s a look at what the lucrative top 10 will look like at the Tour Championship.
- 1st: $18 million
- 2nd: $6.5 million
- 3rd: $5 million
- 4th: $4 million
- 5th: $3 million
- 6th: $2.5 million
- 7th: $2 million
- 8th: $1.5 million
- 9th: $1.25 million
- 10th $1 million
Last year, McIlroy overcame a six-stroke deficit at the start of the week and a five-stroke deficit at the start of the final day to defeat Scheffler by one and swipe an additional $11.5 million from him in the process.
