2024 Tour Championship: Odds, Picks & Predictions
Run through the tape. There is a lot of money at the end of the months-long PGA Tour season, culminating with the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. It has been a wonderful season for this column, full of outright winners and placement bet cashes. One more betting slip to turn in and a final window from which to collect.
Only 30 golfers qualified for the final leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs, with a $25 million top prize. Even the runner-up this week will win a cool $12.5 million, but there’s a catch. In a convoluted attempt to reward the best season-long body of work, the PGA Tour has continued a graduated starting score format. Here’s how it breaks down:
| Scottie Scheffler | -10 |
| Xander Schauffele | -8 |
| Hideki Matsuyama | -7 |
| Keegan Bradley | -6 |
| Ludvig Åberg | -5 |
| Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, Sam Burns, Patrick Cantlay | -4 |
| Sungjae Im, Sahith Theegala, Shane Lowry, Adam Scott, Tony Finau | -3 |
| Ben An, Viktor Hovland, Russell Henley, Akshay Bhatia, Robert MacIntyre | -2 |
| Billy Horschel, Tommy Fleetwood, Sepp Straka, Matthieu Pavon, Taylor Pendrith | -1 |
| Chris Kirk, Tom Hoge, Aaron Rai, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Justin Thomas | Even |
I agree, it’s really stupid and has resulted in only one winner with double-digit odds in the last 10 years. Why even invite 30 players if only a handful have any chance to win? Luckily, we can still bet on lines that ignore the starting strokes and only consider gross stroke totals. This final column of the 2024 Tour will feature a mixture of both net and gross wagers. Here are our top 2024 Tour Championship picks and predictions.
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2024 Tour Championship: Odds, Picks & Predictions
(Odds Courtesy of DraftKings Sportsbook)
East Lake Golf Club underwent a major renovation over the past 12 months. The fairway turf is Zoysia, which creates a faster runway off the tee with longer rollouts. The small green complexes were given more severe runoffs and a new blend of championship Bermuda, promising to be less receptive to approach shots than in years past. The fairways are still very narrow and lined with gnarled Bermuda rough.
Good, accurate drives are required here with the bomber’s advantage all but eliminated by the Zoysia. I have put a lot of focus on general approach metrics over the last 24 rounds, with a specific focus on the 200-plus yards distance category. Scrambling and bogey avoidance are also going to be key to staying in contention, so they will be tied in with recent form to handicap 2024’s swan song. With Ray Charles’ dulcet tones floating among the peach blossoms, let’s tee off.
Xander Schauffele
They call him “Mr. East Lake” and it’s fitting, considering Xander Schauffele has never finished worse than seventh at the Tour Championship. His huge comeback win in 2017 combined with multiple runner-up finishes all paint a picture that Xander is much more equipped to take down the event than heavy favorite Scottie Scheffler. Scheffler has been reading putts like Mr. Magoo the last two weeks and was also uncharacteristically erratic off the tee in Colorado last week. Xander has no weaknesses in his game. None of the golfers have played this version of East Lake, but this new East Lake has also never seen this version of Schauffele.
Picks: Outright +230 [2u]; Outright (Gross) +400 [1u]
Wyndham Clark
Out of all the golfers who are within shouting distance of Scheffler to begin play, only Wyndham Clark figures to have the birdie-making firepower to soar to the top of the leaderboard. His accuracy off the tee has been in a groove during these playoffs. Clark’s ability to gain strokes on approach hinges on that, while his world-class short game brings the whole picture into focus. Wyndham is top-five in the field in more than half the categories in my model and he is blazing hot heading into East Lake. All things considered, he’s is my favorite flyer pick on the net market.
Picks: Outright +4000 [1u]; Outright (Gross) +2000 [1u]
Viktor Hovland
The defending FedEx Cup champ begins play a whopping eight strokes behind Scheffler. Although he has virtually no possible route to repeat, we still cannot ignore the shellacking Hovland put on in East Lake back in 2023. It also bears repeating that we saw vintage Viktor merely two weeks ago in Memphis. He might not agree on how sharp his game is shaping up leading into the week, but I have the utmost confidence in the horses for courses theory at East Lake. Hovland was completely dominant here and he’s among the scariest competitors when he’s firing on all cylinders.
Picks: Outright (Gross) +1400 [1u]
Deep Shot: Christiaan Bezuidenhout
Why Christiaan Bezuidenhout? Well, he’s the best in this illustrious field in scrambling. Bez is also eighth on approach and eighth in putting on Bermuda over the last 24 rounds. The South African is seventh in opportunities gained and has been a model of consistency down the stretch this season. I will be wagering a half unit on him finishing as the best gross score (+6000) and it would be great to hit yet another long shot for a proper sendoff to 2024. I wish you all the best of luck and will see you in late December for the Sentry in Hawaii.