The 2025 PGA Tour season concludes this week with its traditional finale, the Tour Championship, but it’s all change at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. The handicap-style starting-strokes format which had been in operation since 2019 has been scrapped with the top 30 on the FedEx Cup standings teeing off at level par in Thursday’s opening round.
A quick glance at the current odds and one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, but don’t rub your eyes, Scottie Scheffler is as short as +150 to follow up last week’s BMW Championship success with a victory at East Lake, which would see him land the $10 million FedEx Cup champion’s prize. Can he do it? Let’s dive into my golf predictions for this week’s Tour Championship.
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Tour Championship golf picks and predictions
Tour Championship best bet: Viktor Hovland (+3000)
Odds available at FanDuel Sportsbook at time of publishing.
The PGA Tour has never quite been able to get the playoffs right. The starting-strokes format was brought in to eliminate the scenario which, in 2018, saw Tiger Woods win the Tour Championship while Justin Rose secured the FedEx Cup millions. However, dominant wins for Viktor Hovland (5 shots) and Scheffler (4 shots) in the last 2 editions did not make for exciting viewing, and the format never worked as a betting medium either. Funnily enough, Scheffler isn’t all that much bigger odds than last year – remarkable considering the change of format no longer gives him a start of at least 6 shots over 83 percent of the field.
If he has his pocket picked by one of the outsiders, the PGA Tour will have got it wrong again, but the best team doesn’t always win the Super Bowl — it’s about turning up when the heat is on. Scheffler does that better than anyone else, but he has never topped the 72-hole scoring at East Lake, finishing 3rd behind Collin Morikawa and Sahith Theegala last year but still prevailing easily thanks to his starting score.
With that in mind, Scheffler looks worth taking on with former winner Viktor Hovland, who was the 4th-best scorer at East Lake in 2021 and topped the 72-hole leaderboard when running away with it 3 years later. The Norwegian has shown flashes of his old brilliance recently, including when 7th at the BMW last weekend. His iron play was exceptional at Caves Valley, and he’s well-suited to the ball-striking test that East Lake presents. With Rory McIlroy not at his best and Xander Schauffele not in the top 30, Hovland could be the man to put the most pressure on the favorite.
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Tour Championship prediction: Russell Henley (+2000)
Odds available at FanDuel Sportsbook and DraftKings Sportsbook at time of publishing.
It’s been a superb season for Russell Henley, who has locked up a place in the US Ryder Cup team and is also in the running for the biggest financial prize on the PGA Tour. The Georgia native is a greens-in-regulation machine who closed with a 61 to share 4th place at the 2024 Tour Championship. East Lake form figures of 12-3-14-4 are encouraging, and he’s better than ever for this latest attempt.
Tour Championship pick: Justin Rose (+5500)
Odds available at FanDuel Sportsbook at time of publishing.
Justin Rose, a hugely gutsy winner of the St. Jude Championship, returns to the Tour Championship after 6 years, when he finished 26th in the first event under the starting-strokes format. Prior to that, the Englishman had finished 2nd, 6th, 4th, 2nd, 10th and 4th from 2012 to 2018. The course has been modified since, but it would be no shock if he’s up there once again.
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