Collin Morikawa played the lowest 72 holes of anyone at East Lake in 2024 and finished second. Scottie Scheffler’s four rounds ranked third best in the field that week, and he left Atlanta with the FedEx Cup and a $25 million bonus. Nobody filed a protest. That was the format, and it explains why this week’s Tour Championship odds look nothing like the board that hung over the same golf course two years ago.
What a Ten-Shot Head Start Was Worth
From 2019 through 2024 the season finale used Starting Strokes. The FedEx Cup points leader teed off Thursday at 10 under par, second place at 8 under, third at 7, fourth at 6, fifth at 5, and everyone else somewhere between 4 under and level.
Scheffler led the standings in 2024, so he began at 10 under. Morikawa began at 4 under. Across the four rounds that followed, Morikawa took 262 shots and Scheffler took two more. Scheffler won by four. The PGA Tour published the gross leaderboard itself that week, and it showed Morikawa with the lowest 72-hole score of the 30 men in the field while Scheffler’s play ranked third.
Scheffler wasn’t the only golfer handed shots, and he didn’t always keep them. Rory McIlroy ran him down from six back in 2022. Viktor Hovland did it in 2023. A head start big enough to decide a trophy and small enough to blow is an odd thing for a golf tournament to carry around for six years.
Even Par for Everybody
The Tour scrapped Starting Strokes effective 2025. All 30 players now open at even par and the low 72-hole score takes the FedEx Cup, a change the Tour announced under its Fan Forward banner alongside a tougher course setup. Bonus money got rebalanced at the same time, in the Tour’s own phrasing, to “account for the increased volatility.”
Follow that money and the split gets strange. Scheffler banked $23 million on Sunday night for finishing first in points after the BMW Championship, and no result in Atlanta can touch it. The Tour Championship winner gets $10 million. A season of golf pays more than twice what the trophy pays, and only the trophy needs anyone to show up Thursday.
Year one under the new rules went to Tommy Fleetwood, who arrived at East Lake without a PGA Tour win to his name and left with the FedEx Cup, three clear of Patrick Cantlay and Russell Henley.
What the Tour Championship Odds Say Now
Two years ago BetMGM had Scheffler at +110 to win at East Lake, per Sports Illustrated’s preview that week, with Xander Schauffele next at +240 and a long gap down to Hideki Matsuyama at +1000. The tail of that board ran past 200-1.
DraftKings posted its 2026 numbers on Sunday. Scheffler sits at +310, McIlroy at +830, then fourteen names bunch together between +1375 and +3000, and the longest price on the published list reads +8200. The PGA Tour’s own betting desk carried Scheffler at +330 and McIlroy at +810 on August 10, so the level holds across sources even as the exact figure drifts.
Convert those. A +110 favorite is priced near a 48% chance of winning. Scheffler at +310 sits close to 24%. Two different books two years apart is not a controlled experiment, and the comparison points a direction rather than measuring one, but the direction is hard to miss.
Ryan Fox Went From 200-1 to 82-1 in Five Weeks
Fox won The Open at Royal Birkdale in July at 200-1, and we looked at what that ticket actually proved when it happened. He now sits 30th in FedEx Cup points, the last man through the gate, and DraftKings prices him at +8200.
Same golfer, five weeks apart, at less than half the number. His form didn’t double. Birkdale had 156 starters and East Lake has 30, and that is the variable doing the work. Scheffler crosses the same gap in the opposite direction, roughly +550 in July against +310 now. Field size moves a golf price further than most things a player does, which is the arithmetic our underdog win rates by sport page walks through.
Where a Flatter Board Stops Being Good News
Somebody reading fourteen names inside a 1,625-point band could decide the tail has come alive. Slow down.
Thirty players, no cut, four rounds. That’s the friendliest setting in golf for the best player alive, and taking away his head start didn’t make him worse at hitting a golf ball. One season of results under the new rules is one season. Fleetwood is a data point.
Then the tax. Add up the 28 prices DraftKings published and they sum to 129% of implied probability, a theoretical hold near 23%, and two of the 30 golfers weren’t on the list at all. Anyone shopping the flat middle of that board is paying something close to a quarter before a ball gets struck. Price and probability stay separate objects, which is the argument our underdog betting philosophy page keeps making, and flattening the first does nothing to the second.
A live variable sits on top of all of it. Scheffler played the BMW Championship with hand, foot and mouth disease, blisters on his hands and in his throat, and still posted 7 under. He told reporters he’d been advised to withdraw and played anyway, adding that “if I was smarter maybe I would have pulled out.” The market has had roughly a day to think about that, and Thursday will tell us how much a healed set of hands is worth.
Morikawa’s 262 in 2024 bought him second place. Fleetwood’s 262 last year bought him the FedEx Cup. Same number of shots, same golf course, different rulebook.