Following an exciting regular season, the PGA Tour hosts a three-tournament postseason, the 2024 FedEx Cup Playoffs, which concludes with a massive Tour Championship where the majority of the grand total $100 million purse is dished out to golfers. In fact, the $25 million top prize is tied for the largest payout on the PGA Tour this season with the Players Championship.
Only 70 golfers advanced to the first round of the playoffs, the FedEx St. Jude Championship, same as last season. With 40 of those players now eliminated following the BMW Championship, the field has thinned in terms of the best golfers in the world able to compete for the league’s top prize. There’s plenty of star power still remaining, though, with Scottie Scheffler and Xander Schauffele atop the standings and other significant players like Rory McIlroy, Hideki Matsuyama, Collin Morikawa and Wyndham Clark in contention.
For Scheffler, a FedEx Cup win would be his first, but it would also serve as a feather in his cap on the back of a stellar season that already includes six PGA Tour victories and an Olympic gold medal. The same goes for Schauffele, a two-time major championship winner this season.
For everyone involved, there will be a ton of money and plenty of accolades at stake over the next three weeks. Let’s take a closer look at what has occurred and what we can still expect from this year’s festivities.
2024 FedEx Cup Playoffs schedule
|
FedEx St. Jude Championship |
Aug. 15-18 |
Memphis, Tenn. |
TPC Southwind |
70 |
|
BMW Championship |
Aug. 22-25 |
Castle Pines, Colo. |
Castle Pines |
50 |
|
Tour Championship |
Aug. 29 – Sept. 1 |
Atlanta, Ga. |
East Lake Golf Club |
30 |
The top 70 in the FedEx Cup standings, via points accumulated throughout the year, played in the St. Jude Championship last week with 50 competing in the BMW Championship prior to the field being trimmed for the final time.
All three events are 72-hole, stroke-play tournaments, though the fields gradually get smaller as the playoffs roll on. The points change, too, as everything is quadrupled. During regular-season events, most winners receive 500 FedEx Cup points for finishing first at tournaments (in a handful of events, 600 points went to first place). The winners of the first two FedEx Cup Playoffs events will instead receive 2,000 points each. The point boost goes for every slot on the leaderboard: 300 for second becomes 1,200 and so on.
Only seven golfers surpassed the 2,000-point total during the entire regular season: Scheffler, Schauffele, McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, Ludvig Åberg and Sahith Theegala. Scheffler opened these playoffs with nearly a 3,500-point lead on third-place McIlroy — who has since fallen off the pace — while Schauffele himself was 1,500 points up on the rest of the field.
Winners are disproportionately rewarded and deservedly so given this is the postseason. This provides the opportunity for golfers to go on a hot streak and rocket up the FedEx Cup standings like Hideki Matsuyama and Keegan Bradley did over the first two weeks.
The top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings after the St. Jude Championship move on to the BMW Championship. Then the top 30 after that move on to the Tour Championship.
2024 FedEx Cup standings
Scheffler and Schauffele are having extraordinary seasons. They rank No. 1 and No. 3 on the all-time single season money list at $29.2 million and $18.4 million, respectively, following the second playoff event. Those numbers are officially locked in as money from the FedEx Cup does not count toward a player’s official money.
Here’s a look at the top 30 in the standings following the BMW Championship.
|
1 |
Scottie Scheffler (6,615) |
16 |
Ben An (2,040) |
|
2 |
Xander Schauffele (5,422) |
17 |
Viktor Hovland (1,967) |
|
3 |
Hideki Matsuyama (3,899) |
18 |
Russell Henley (1,933) |
|
4 |
Keegan Bradley (3,096) |
19 |
Akshay Bhatia (1,091) |
|
5 |
Ludvig Åberg (2,980) |
20 |
Robert MacIntyre (1,885) |
|
6 |
Rory McIlroy (2,829) |
21 |
Billy Horschel (1,838) |
|
7 |
Collin Morikawa (2,714) |
22 |
Tommy Fleetwood (1,747) |
|
8 |
Wyndham Clark (2,708) |
23 |
Sepp Straka (1,721) |
|
9 |
Sam Burns (2,518) |
24 |
Matthieu Pavon (1,690) |
| 10 | Patrick Cantlay (2,221) | 25 | Taylor Pendrith (1,668) |
|
11 |
Sungjae Im (2,220) |
26 |
Chris Kirk (1,656) |
| 12 | Sahith Theegala (2,114) | 27 | Tom Hoge (1,655) |
| 13 | Shane Lowry (2,099) | 28 | Aaron Rai (1,639) |
| 14 | Adam Scott (2,058) | 29 | Christiaan Bezuidenhout (1,628) |
| 15 | Tony Finau (2,047) | 30 | Justin Thomas (1,617) |
Matsuyama made a move to third by winning the St. Jude Championship. Bradley was the big mover at the BMW Championship as he barely got into the second playoff event but is now in fourth as the Tour Championship begins.
2024 Tour Championship format
Heading into the Tour Championship inside the top five or top 10 in the FedEx Cup standings is important because of how scoring is dispersed. Whoever is first in the FedEx Cup standings after the BMW Championship starts the Tour Championship at 10 under, and the event is played under normal scoring conditions from there.
With so much money at stake (again, $25 million for first place), those margins become more meaningful than even a normal week. The eventual winners of the four FedEx Cups played under this format have all started in the top seven at the Tour Championship.
- 10 under — Scottie Scheffler
- 8 under — Xander Schauffele
- 7 under — Hideki Matsuyama
- 6 under — Keegan Bradley
- 5 under — Ludvig Åberg
- 4 under — Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, Sam Burns, Patrick Cantlay
- 3 under — Sungjae Im, Sahith Theegala, Shane Lowry, Adam Scott, Tony Finau
- 2 under — Ben An, Viktor Hovland, Russell Henley, Akshay Bhatia, Robert MacIntyre
- 1 under — Billy Horschel, Tommy Fleetwood, Sepp Straka, Matthieu Pavon, Taylor Pendrith
- Even — Chris Kirk, Tom Hoge, Aaron Rai, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Justin Thomas
2024 FedEx Cup Playoffs purse, prize money
2024 St. Jude Championship purse, prize money
- 1st: $3.6 million
- 2nd: $2.2 million
- 3rd: $1.4 million
- 4th: $960,000
- 5th: $800,000
- 6th: $720,000
- 7th: $670,000
- 8th: $620,000
- 9th: $580,000
- 10th: $540,000
2024 BMW Championship purse, prize money
- 1st: $3.6 million
- 2nd: $2.2 million
- 3rd: $1.4 million
- 4th: $990,000
- 5th: $830,000
- 6th: $750,000
- 7th: $695,000
- 8th: $640,000
- 9th: $600,000
- 10th: $560,000
2024 Tour Championship purse, prize money
The figures are startling for the finale. The winner of the Tour Championship receives $25 million. Second place is $12.5 million! Here’s a look at what the lucrative top 10 will look like at the Tour Championship.
- 1st: $25 million
- 2nd: $12.5 million
- 3rd: $7.5 million
- 4th: $6 million
- 5th: $5 million
- 6th: $3.5 million
- 7th: $2.75 million
- 8th: $2.25 million
- 9th: $2 million
- 10th $1.75 million
Last year, Viktor Hovland won the BMW Championship and then took the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup over Schauffele. Both players shot the same 19-under score at East Lake to end the year, but Hovland started the tournament at 8 under while Schauffele only started it at 3 under so Hovland easily won by five and took home the first prize of what was then $18 million.