Power Rankings: FedExCup Playoffs

The hard part is over, but the harder part is about to begin.

To have qualified for the FedExCup Playoffs is to have had a season of which to be proud. No matter how you slice it, it’s been a success. For some, however, it’s not just a goal, it’s the expectation, but the series of three events is loaded with bonuses that not only can sustain a career, they can help define it.

This special edition of the Power Rankings for the FedExCup Playoffs considers how the field at East Lake Golf Club will be constructed for the TOUR Championship. The outcomes of the FedEx St. Jude Championship and the BMW Championship will play starring roles, but historical trends cannot be denied.

Beneath the expanded ranking of 30 in pursuit of being the focus of the 17th FedExCup trophy presentation are details including field size, formats of competition, FedExCup Starting Strokes, prize monies, perks and other information to help guide you through the last three weeks of the 2022-23 PGA TOUR season.

This year’s lineup of host courses features a trio of stock par 70s.

TPC Southwind in Memphis leads off for the FedEx St. Jude. It’s in its second year of duty for the tournament, but it hosted a World Golf Championship from 2019-2021 and the FedEx St. Jude Classic from 1989-2018. It tips at 7,342 yards and its Bermuda greens can look further than they appear because they’re about one-third smaller than average square footage. Length off the tee and precision upon approach will underscore how a majority of the final leaderboard executed.

The North Course at Olympia Fields Country Club that hosts the BMW Championship is in the southern suburb of Chicago of the same name. Although its combination Bentgrass-Poa greens are average in size, they’re largely unfamiliar having hosted only the 2020 BMW Championship in recent memory. Therefore, muscle and iron play will have another week out front, but putters will play up comparable to TPC Southwind.

East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta remains the constant among the triumvirate. For the TOUR Championship, it can stretch to 7,346 yards with Bermuda greens racing to 13 feet on the Stimpmeter.

For the first time in Playoffs history, the opening field is just 70 deep. The other unprecedented change is that there is no cut in the lid-lifter at TPC Southwind. All qualifiers are guaranteed 72 holes to wedge into the top 50 and advance. Short of a victory at the BMW Championship, the objective will be to rise into the top 30 in FedExCup standings for a tee time in the finale.

Players will continue to accumulate FedExCup points for overall position in the first two events, but the points are quadrupled. A win that’s typically worth 500 points will yield 2,000. A runner-up usually worth 300 now rewards 1,200, and so on.

This is the fourth time that four times the points will be distributed (2019, 2021-present). Each time, all of the opening top-19 seeds have advanced to East Lake. That line in history currently is drawn immediately in front of Shane Lowry, who was the 20-seed in 2019. He went T52-T48 and landed at 33rd, outside the bubble to qualify for the TOUR Championship.

That fact supports why all of this year’s top-19 seeds are peppered throughout the ranking above. However, differences in total points relative to others in the overall standings are more influential than mere positions. For example, consider that Tom Kim (ranked 14th) leads Si Woo Kim (18th) by just 50 points entering the FedEx St. Jude, while Si Woo Kim opens with a margin of 126 points over Collin Morikawa (22nd), but both differences between endpoints of those comparisons are four spots in the overall standings. So, not only is Si Woo Kim safer than Tom Kim to retain his position, he’s also more likely to climb with a worse result compared to the golfers chasing him.

As it concerns advancing from outside the opening 50 and into the BMW Championship, we can review how the 70 at that tournament in 2019, 2021 and 2022 fared in relation to their position at its conclusion after which only the top 30 advanced to the TOUR Championship. Certainly, the motivation is different this time to scale into only the top 50 to survive, but points still were quadrupled in the first three editions, so an apples-to-apples comparison is fair.

Eight golfers moved from outside to inside the top 50, with at least two in each edition. The most impressive rise was Taylor Pendrith in 2022. He finished T8 at the BMW Championship to climb from 67th to 46th. In fact, of the eight, he recorded the only top 10. Perhaps most valuable to note is that all golfers with top-15 finishes in each of the three BMW Championships ranked inside the top 50 thereafter.

The FedEx St. Jude and the BMW Championship each boast a prize fund of $20 million of which each champion will earn $3.6 million. All of the 50 who qualify for the BMW Championship will be eligible for all eight Signature Events in 2024. The schedule including a comprehensive breakdown of how all of it works was released on Monday, Aug. 7.

With those benefits banked, the final step to the summit is the TOUR Championship for which FedExCup points do not apply. Instead, and as it has since 2019, Starting Strokes will be used to set the opening leaderboard. They are based on position in the FedExCup standings upon arrival. The top seed will begin the Playoffs finale at 10-under. The 2-seed will start at 8-under. The cascade continues down to the golfers seeded 26-30 who will open at even par. The golfer with the lowest score in relation to par when combining his Starting Strokes with his 72-hole stroke-play total will be crowned the FedExCup champion.

The winner of the TOUR Championship will receive an official PGA TOUR victory, a TOUR membership extension through 2028 and $18 million of a prize fund of $75 million that will be distributed among the top 150 in the FedExCup standings at the conclusion of the Wyndham Championship. (Breakdowns of the FedExCup points structure during the Playoffs, Starting Strokes and the bonus money can be found here.)

The other 29 golfers at East Lake will receive a two-year membership exemption through 2025, if necessary, and exemptions into the 2024 editions of the Masters, U.S. Open and The Open Championship.

As it concerns the permutations, the format of the Playoffs caters to anything goes. For instance, six FedExCup champions either missed the cut or didn’t play in the first leg of the series from which they emerged as the winner. Also, the same golfer has won multiple tournaments in the same Playoffs 11 times! Patrick Cantlay in 2021 is the most recent. As a proper format should make possible, both ends of the spectrum of form in a short series reward both the aggregate value of the FedExCup Regular Season and igniting form at the right time to win it all.

ROB BOLTON’S SCHEDULE

PGATOUR.com’s Rob Bolton recaps and previews every tournament from numerous perspectives. Look for his following contributions as scheduled.

MONDAY: Power Rankings (FedEx St. Jude)

TUESDAY*: Power Rankings (FedExCup Playoffs), Sleepers (FedEx St. Jude)

WEDNESDAY: Golfbet Insider

SUNDAY: Payouts and Points, Qualifiers, Reshuffle

* - Rob is a member of the panel for PGATOUR.COM’s Expert Picks for PGA TOUR Fantasy Golf, which also publishes on Tuesday.