The Tour Championship picks, golf odds and best bets | Pickswise
Wow, what a Sunday round of 61 for Viktor Hovland to win the BMW Championship at Olympia Fields. It looked as though Scottie Scheffler had the title locked up until Hovland birdied seven of his last nine holes to take the win, and the 2,000 FedExCup points.
I had a feeling about Matthew Fitzpatrick at the start of the week and tipped him for a top-10 at +350, so his runner-up finish was a nice money-maker. My outright pick of Max Homa finished T5 after taking the lead at the half-way mark. Now we move onto the big one; the finale! Although it’s not really the “finale” of the season, which continues until November. Confusing? Slightly, but I’ll break that down for you in the next few weeks.
The Tour Championship field is locked and the final 30 will be teeing it up at East Lake in Atlanta. There’s a lot that comes with making it all the way to the Tour Championship – exemption into three of the four majors, including the Masters, plus last place this week will earn $500,000. The eventual winner of the FedExCup will walk away with an enormous $18 million.
Things get a little bit complicated if you’re not familiar with this FedExCup Playoff format, and a staggered scoring system comes into effect based on the season-long points list.
Before the first tee shots are even struck on Thursday, we already have a leaderboard. Guys are awarded a starting score based on their position in the standings, and it looks like this:
- Scottie Scheffler -10
- Viktor Hovland -8
- Rory McIlroy -7
- Jon Rahm -6
- Lucas Glover -5
- Max Homa -4
Patrick Cantlay -4 - Brian Harman -4
- Wyndham Clark -4
- Matthew Fitzpatrick -4
- Tommy Fleetwood -3
- Russell Henley -3
- Keegan Bradley -3
- Rickie Fowler -3
- Xander Schauffele -3
- Tom Kim -2
- Sungjae Im -2
- Tony Finau -2
- Corey Conners -2
- Si Woo Kim -2
- Taylor Moore -1
- Nick Taylor -1
- Adam Schenk -1
- Collin Morikawa -1
- Jason Day -1
- Sam Burns E
- Emiliano Grillo E
- Tyrrell Hatton E
- Jordan Spieth E
- Sepp Straka E
So, before play even begins and for the second year running, Scottie Scheffler has a 10-stroke lead over five of the field, and leads his closest competitor by two. But, as we know in golf, deficits can be made up fairly quickly and leaders can fall away in the blink of an eye. Scheffler was an example of that last year, after he lead by five strokes after the opening round, by two after the second round and eventually lost by one stroke to Rory McIlroy.
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East Lake Country Club: What you need to know
East Lake is no walk in the park, that’s for sure. It’s a par-70 that measures just shy of 7,350 yards, so it’s definitely not a short course. Plus, we only have two par 5s this week.
Distance off the tee is a bonus around here, the fairways are tricky to hit and ball-striking is key. Picking your place on the green is key to scoring on these Donald Ross greens, and approach play historically is an important stat to look at.
The thing is, however, we have the 30 best players from the season comPeting so they’re all playing good Golf. In that sense, the stats go out the window a little.
Plus, we have to add in Ryder Cup motivation considering a lot of guys (especially the Americans) are vying for a place on that team.
Having said that, experience around East Lake counts for a lot, and we obviously have to take the starting scores into consideration.
Scheffler’s odds opened at +150, with McIlroy at +350 and Rahm at +850. It’s tricky not to pick Scheffler as the outright favorite, but at +150 I’m going to see how the first round plays out, follow his odds and maybe bet him live.
Knox’s Knockout Tour Championship picks
Viktor Hovland (+550 at PointsBet)
Sitting at No.2 in the standings and starting on 8-under par is last week’s winner of the BMW Championship, Viktor Hovland. With Scheffler and McIlory ahead of him on the odds board, I’ll add Hovland after some extremely impressive play last week. In fact, Hovland has truly leveled up this season and boasts two victories with an additional six top-10s. The Norwegian’s off-the-tee stats have been excellent and he’s only been in the negative once this entire season; that came two weeks ago in Memphis and he still finished T13. Hovland finished top-20 in all four majors, in fact he was 2nd at the PGA Championship, and T3 at The Players. When you add up the aggregate score in all the majors this year, Hovland is second lowest to Scheffler. Viktor could close that two stroke gap pretty quickly at East Lake, where he finished 5th in 2021.
Xander Schauffele (+3500 at PointsBet)
It always feels like an oversight to look past Xander at East Lake. Need proof? Last year he finished 4th, and shot a 63 in the second round to close the gap at the top. In ’21, he finished 5th and gained almost 3.5 strokes total on the field. In 2020, he shot -15 for the week and shot the lowest score without the handicap system. He finished T2 in the end, but if it had been a normal stroke play event without the staggered scoring, he’d have won by 3 shots. He also finished runner-up here in 2019, and won the Tour Championship in 2017 – however that was before the handicap system came into play, and Justin Thomas was the overall winner of the FedExCup. Anyway, safe to say there’s something about this course that really suits Schauffele’s game. Combine that with his recent form – eleven top-20 finishes in his last fourteen starts – and that 7 stroke deficit behind Scheffler seems a little bit smaller.
Keegan Bradley (+17500 at PointsBet)
I’m looking at the Ryder Cup standings for my next pick. Six guys are already locked in, and an additional six will be picked by captain Zach Johnson next week. He has a tough job, because when I look at the standings, it’s difficult to separate at least eight Americans, nine if you want to throw Justin Thomas into the mix. One guy who needs to stand out and put on a strong performance this week is Keegan Bradley. He starts his round on Thursday at -3 so has a huge amount of ground to make up, but has openly said he thinks about making the team every moment he’s awake. It’s all or nothing for Keegan out there, who won the Travelers back in June.
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Tour Championship Prop Bets
Max Homa top-5 (+300 at PointsBet)
I picked Homa as an outright for the BMW last week and he finished T5. I talked about the fact he was trending in the right direction having finished T21-T12-T10-T6 and now T5. He also finished T5 at the Tour Championship last year in his debut appearance at East Lake. Nice odds for continued good play from Max.
Xander Schauffele top American (+1200 at Bet365)
Let’s say Scheffler’s putter lets him down this week and either McIlroy, Rahm or Hovland lift the FedExCup – who will be top American? I laid out my argument for Xander as an outright pick this week, and with his tremendous course History at East Lake, and odds of 12/1, I’ll take this bet all day.
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