The FedEx Cup Playoffs will begin this weekend with the FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee. It is a designated event and the top 70 players in the FedEx Cup standings have qualified for the FedEx St. Jude Championship. After this week, players who finish in the top 50 will qualify for the FedEx Cup BMW Championship next week In Illinois.
COURSE
TPC Southwind’s par-70, 7,244-yard championship layout was designed by noted architect Ron Prichard, with PGA TOUR players Hubert Green and Fuzzy Zoeller serving as consultants. The golf course has long been rated one of the more challenging courses on the PGA TOUR schedule.
PURSE
The Fedex Cup St. Jude Championship has a $20 million purse, with a $3.6 million winner’s share along with 2,000 FedEx Points. Second place finisher picks up $2.18 million and 1,200 points, while the third-place finisher will bring home $1.38 million and 760 points. Elevated FedEx points provide increased competition down the stretch, with the top 50 at week’s end advancing to the BMW Championship.
POINTS & MONEY
Only a player’s Fedex Cup point total determined whether they fell into the top 70 and advance. They all will start with the total amount of FedEx points they received at the end of the 44-tournament 2022-2023 season. Also, it’s not where a player finishes in a FedEx Championship tournament that’s always important, it’s how many points he has at the finish that’s important.
The top 50-point getters are heading to the BMW Championships no matter where they finish in the St. Jude Championship this weekend. The top 30 FedEx point finishers at the BMW championships head to Atlanta and the East Lake Golf Course where the format takes a drastic change in how the Tour Championship in formatted.
FEDEX CUP STROKES
One of the words you never hear mentioned during the PGA’s regular season is the word “Handicap.” This is due to the fact that PGA golfers don’t have handicaps they have Strokes. The reason that it’s important that you know this is because as the FEDEXCUP heads into the final Tour Championship, with a final field of 30 eligible players, 25 players will receive Strokes and 5 players, who could probably use them, will receive none.
That means that 25 golfers are headed to the first tee, on opening day at the Tour Championship, with Strokes. The distribution of those Strokes is posted in the PGA TOUR’s FedExCup Playoffs Overview as “Starting Strokes for the Tour Championship” and are as follows:
The FedExCup points leader after the first two Playoffs events will begin the PGA TOUR Championship at 10-under par. The No. 2 player will start at 8-under. The No. 3 player starts at 7-under; the No. 4 player starts at 6-under; the No. 5 player starts at 5-under. Players 6-10 start at 4-under; players 11-15 start at 3-under; players 16-20 start at 2-under; players 21-25 start at 1-under; and players 26-30 start at even par.
In the event there are tied players at any position going into the Tour Championship, tied players will be awarded the same number of starting strokes for round one; for example, two players are tied for the No.2 position both players would start at 8-under, and the No. 4 player would start at 6- under
The next three weeks of the PGA TOUR’s season should be an interesting combination of watching some of the best golfers in the world, playing for the most prize money in Professional Golf.
Let the games begin.
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