The two-week sprint to East Lake – and the $75 million bonus pool waiting there – begins in earnest Thursday at TPC Southwind.

With 70 players qualifying for the first of the three-tournament 2023 FedExCup Playoffs – and just 50 advancing to the second leg next week – there will be a sense of urgency for a significant percentage of the field this week from the opening tee shot.

Twenty First Group ran 20,000 simulations of this week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship using player trends, course statistics and situational performance data. The BMW Championship bubble this week will be full of interesting storylines, with multiple major champions needing a strong performance this week to advance.

47. Mackenzie Hughes

Probability to advance: 54.2%

Hughes’ season is a reminder of what an early season win can do for a player. More than 50 percent of Hughes’ 890 regular season FedExCup points came from his win at the Sanderson Farms Championship. His only other top-ten finish on TOUR since then was at the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play in Austin, Texas, when he advanced all the way to the quarterfinals.

Hughes has had a rough summer stretch, and not just in terms of golf: in his last eight starts, he’s missed five cuts and was forced to withdraw from the Travelers Championship after suffering from kidney stones. The Canadian is looking to make his fifth career appearance at the BMW Championship.

48. Cameron Young

Probability to advance: 70.9%

At times in 2023, Cameron Young has flashed what made him last season’s PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year: he’s ranked third in driving distance, fourth in birdie average and 10th in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee. The difference in Young’s performance this season has been in limiting mistakes: he is 123rd in bogey avoidance this season, down more than 40 spots from the previous year. As you might expect, his scrambling (171st) and Strokes Gained: Putting (167th) have taken a bit of a dive, too.

That explosive scoring ability, though, has not gone anywhere. Last year at TPC Southwind, arguably the best player on the PGA TOUR without a win yet to his credit – Will Zalatoris – broke through with his first victory. Young, who is in the conversation for that title now, would love to follow in Will’s footsteps.

49. Lucas Glover

Probability to advance: 36.8%

Lucas Glover’s decision to put a long putter in play before the Rocket Mortgage Classic completely changed the trajectory of his season. Entering that week, Glover was losing 0.78 strokes to the field per round on the greens, ranking an anemic 187th on TOUR. Since, he’s getting positive strokes on the greens in 72% of his rounds, averaging a stout +0.66 Strokes Gained: Putting per round. That differential on the greens adds up to a whopping 5.76 strokes per 72 holes.

A week after picking up TOUR win number five in Greensboro, Glover will try to keep the momentum going in TPC Southwind, where he finished in a tie for third a year ago. Entering July, the 2009 U.S. Open champ was 167th in the FedExCup standings. With another strong week – incredibly – East Lake won’t be out of the question.

50. Nick Hardy

Probability to advance: 32.8%

This week’s ‘last-man-in,’ Nick Hardy, has an interesting season resume. Entering the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, he had missed six of his previous eight cuts and sat at 95th in the FedExCup standings. He then teamed up with Davis Riley and won at TPC Louisiana, acquiring 400 points – more than 46 percent of his season total.

That alone, though, wouldn’t put Hardy in the position he’s in – some good follow-up performances have allowed him to only slip 11 spots in the standings since that victory. Hardy finished tied for 20th at the U.S. Open, T-13 at the 3M Open and tied for 27th last week in Greensboro. This is Hardy’s first career PGA TOUR postseason appearance.

53. Taylor Montgomery

Probability to advance: 25.4%

After rattling off five consecutive top-15 finishes in the fall, Taylor Montgomery spent most of the 2022-23 season looking like the favorite to win Rookie of the Year. That’s not necessarily the case any longer: Eric Cole has not missed a cut since May, surging past Montgomery in the FedExCup standings. And Montgomery is one of six rookies in the field this week, a group that includes Vincent Norrman, winner of last month’s Barbasol Championship.

After not missing a cut in any of his first ten starts this season, Montgomery has missed half of his cuts since, including each of his last four. Ranking second on the PGA TOUR this season in Strokes Gained: Putting, he’ll likely need a big week on the greens at TPC Southwind to advance to next week.

57. Hideki Matsuyama

Probability to advance: 33.2%

Matsuyama might be the most interesting player on the outside looking in this week. Getting to the BMW Championship has never meant more: it’s a ticket to the 2024 PGA TOUR Signature Events, tournaments with smaller, elite fields and extremely lucrative purses. It’s difficult to imagine Matsuyama, one of the game’s most consistent ball-strikers of the last decade, not competing in those illustrious tournaments in ’24.

The 2021 Masters champion hasn’t necessarily played poorly this season - he’s 25th on TOUR in Strokes Gained: Total – but he doesn’t have a top-ten finish since THE PLAYERS back in March. Two years ago, Matsuyama fired a weekend 63-64 to get into a playoff at TPC Southwind. He led the field in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green that week.

70. Ben Griffin

Probability to advance: 7.2%

After missing the cut last week at the Wyndham Championship, Ben Griffin and those closest to him might have learned more about FedExCup Playoff point permutations than they ever wanted to. Griffin performed a mathematical highwire act all weekend, sneaking into the field of 70 by the narrowest of margins (see: Thomas, Justin).

Give Griffin credit where it’s due, though. He parlayed strong performances in paradise (T-3 in Bermuda, T-12 in Honolulu) to a comfy early-season FedExCup position and grabbed enough high finishes the rest of the way to qualify for the postseason. Like Matsuyama, Griffin is another player whose underlying metrics (49th this season in Strokes Gained: Total) are better than his FedExCup ranking.