According to Wikipedia, the unofficial fact-checker of major championship top-10 finishes based on yellow-boxed results, the term “lame duck” derives from the London Stock Exchange in the 18th century.
“It was used … to refer to a stockbroker who defaulted on his debts. In 1761, Horace Walpole wrote, in a letter to Sir Horace Mann: ‘Do you know what a Bull and a Bear and Lame Duck are?’ In 1791, Mary Berry wrote that the Duchess of Devonshire’s loss of £50,000 in stocks was ‘the conversation of the town,’ and that her name was to be ‘posted up as a lame duck.’”
Two things: 1) That’s a lot of Horaces; and 2) Lame ducks have always, from the beginning, referred to people.
Think about it. There’s the outgoing politician who’s already lost the election. The retiring official who’s counting down the days. The losing football coach who’s already clearing out his office with a few games left to play.
Based on all of that, this is going to sound weird, but the FedEx Cup is, in itself, a lame-duck format. The PGA Tour has already announced some changes for the 2028 season and more are likely impending, meaning that whatever we’re watching this week won’t be the norm moving forward.
Can we be nostalgic in real-time? That might be pushing it, but for those who like the idea of 30 players starting at even-par and the low score over 72 holes takes the title, enjoy it now, because match play is coming soon.
It might be a terrific move. It might not. The success/failure rate will largely depend on which players advance to future weekends at the Tour Championship. Personally, I don’t love the idea, but I’ve also spent much of the past two decades trying to come up with better ones and I’m not sure they exist, either.
All we know for now is that the current format has lame duck status, which means that if a player wants to win by posting the low score over four rounds, he’d better do it soon. Let’s start off the selections with a pair of ‘em who have come close at East Lake over the years, but are each still searching for a first career FedEx Cup title.
Tour Championship Outright Winner Prediction
Picks: Xander Schauffele (+1200) and Collin Morikawa (+1800)
So, here’s the deal: For the past few weeks, I’ve had Schauffele targeted for the season finale. As I’ve written recently, he said prior to last month’s Rocket Classic that he’d been playing “golf swing” more than golf and needed to become less technical, then finished runner-up that week and T-7 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. I’ve also written that Xander has piled up results at East Lake, three times posting the best 72-hole score and seven times posting a top-seven total in eight trips to Atlanta without a FedEx Cup title to his name yet.
All of which sealed the deal for me to select him this week … until I changed my mind. It was all based on a weekend 67-68 from Morikawa at the BMW Championship which featured an elite-level tee-to-green performance and resulted in a T-4 finish. In fact, when I started writing this preview, I’d penned an entire section on why I was going with Morikawa by a whisker over Schauffele.
That didn’t quite feel right, either, so what I wound up with is a chalky two-fer which shouldn’t leave you too excited and doesn’t make me too proud. After all, I’m not a big fan of short-priced favorites – especially in limited fields – and I’m even less of a fan of two short-priced favorites in the same event. That said, we’re essentially getting a +750 number on 6.7 percent of this 30-man field – and 16.7 percent of the top of this board, which includes the dozen players at +2000 or shorter.
I don’t think this suggests any sort of tremendous value, but it does at least make some sense if we follow both recent form and course history, as each of these players have been amongst the best ball-strikers at East Lake over the past several years.
Tour Championship Top-5 Prediction
Conservative Pick: Patrick Cantlay (+240)
There are few elite-level players more frustrating than Cantlay – and I mean that in a “I’m not mad, I’m just disappointed” kind of way. Watch him play, check out the stats and everything screams top-five player, yet he was ranked outside the top-40 on the OWGR before the playoffs began.
Over the past year, his tournament weeks have too often resulted in one of these two conclusions: Either a hot start and potential title contention devolves into an unfulfilling weekend or a slow start gets a nice little weekend glow-up and the end result looks satisfactory, if not successful.
It’s all led to a season which included four top-10s and 10 top-25s, but no top-fives prior to last week. It feels like a fool’s errand to suggest that Cantlay’s second-place finish at the BMW Championship – during which he neither faded after a strong start nor back-doored into it on the weekend, posting scores of 67-65-66-68 – is going to turn things around, but it’s at least a step in the right direction.
Aggressive Pick: Justin Rose (+550)
If there’s anyone who understands how to get his game to peak for a single week, it’s a guy who’s been doing this for a quarter-century and owns one of the more unique trophy cases in professional golf, including a FedEx Cup title. That was back in 2018, when there were still four playoff events and the champion was determined by points instead of the Tour Championship leaderboard, but at 46 years old, Rose remains motivated to continue chasing down meaty award to add to his Hall of Fame resume.
After a midseason switch to unknown club manufacturer McLaren was widely castigated, he’s back to an elite level with those irons, which should once again work nicely at East Lake.
Tour Championship Top-10 Prediction
Conservative Pick: Gary Woodland (+175)
The byproduct of a 30-man field in the outright market might be seen less in the prices of those at the top of the board than those in the mid-tier – at least for this one. Case in point: Schauffele (+1200) and Morikawa (+1800) are only a few points shorter than they’ve been in bigger events, while Woodland’s +3300 seems egregiously short by comparison.
That said, there’s still a lot to like about the fan favorite, who in order last Sunday afternoon got himself to within one shot of the lead, cold-topped a 3-wood that resulted in double-bogey, still finished in a share of fourth place and became emotional after learning he’d clinched a spot in the Tour Championship for the first time in seven years.
At the end of a long season, when guys are clearly running on fumes, I don’t mind making a few plays based solely on intangibles. Being in this week’s field means something special to Woodland and for that reason alone, I’m banking on this being another solid performance.
Aggressive Pick: Jacob Bridgeman (+180)
As I wrote earlier this week in my breakdown of potential U.S. Presidents Cup captain’s picks, I believe the decision on Bridgeman might be the most intriguing one for Brandt Snedeker and his assistants. Chris Gotterup is a no-brainer to make the team. Xander Schauffele and Justin Thomas will be on there, too.
I’d be a bit surprised if Patrick Cantlay doesn’t make a U.S. team for the seventh straight time. And at this point, it’s hard to envision J.J. Spaun being left out. That leaves one final spot for the likes of Ben Griffin, Akshay Bhatia, Maverick McNealy, Jake Knapp, Michael Thorbjornsen, Jackson Koivun and, yes, Bridgeman, who I think might have the inside track unless another candidate completely outplays him this week or Sneds just wants to go in a completely different direction.
Bridgeman doesn’t have any team experience, but he makes up for it with perhaps the prettiest putting stroke on the PGA Tour, which would be a massive asset to this roster, especially (in my opinion) for the alternate-shot format. Whatever the case, this is a good week to have a good week, as I often like to say, and a top-10 from Bridgeman just might lead to getting the call for the U.S. team shortly thereafter.
Tour Championship First-Round Leader Prediction
Conservative Pick: Hideki Matsuyama (+2200)
Back before betting on golf became mainstream and we were consistently trying to hit FRL wagers each week, I’d always wanted to write an annual column on the PGA Tour’s Thursday All-Star Team, but didn’t want it to come across as a backhanded compliment – or even worse, a slap in the face – to those who struggled to keep those low scores coming for three more rounds.
In recent years, this idea wouldn’t have worked anyway, as Scottie Scheffler led in Round 1 scoring average during each of the past three seasons – and he’s not exactly a guy who only played well on Thursdays. This season’s list is perhaps a little more old-school in that the top-five feel like names picked out of a hat: Beau Hossler, Doug Ghim, Taylor Moore, Patrick Fishburn and Lee Hodges. In fact, there isn’t a Tour Championship competitor on this list until No. 11, as (strangely enough) Matt Fitzpatrick, Chris Gotterup and Gary Woodland each have a Thursday average of exactly 69.00.
I’ll bypass each of them in this market in favor of Matsuyama, who’s all the way down at No. 15 in the ranking at 69.05 per Thursday round. His openers at East Lake have been, well, underwhelming, as last year’s 69 was his first sub-70 Thursday since 2019.
So, why pick him this week? Let’s call it personal. I’ve had Hideki for FRL honors in each of the last two events – a 66 in Memphis and a 72 in St. Louis – and I’d be sick to my stomach if he cashed this week once I’d jumped off. Of course, there’s a better chance I’ll be sick to my stomach by sticking with him here, all of which just sort of defines golf betting in a nutshell.
Aggressive Pick: Alex Smalley (+3300)
Earlier in the week, I wrote about five potential narratives which would leave us with some interesting talking points and one of ‘em is about Smalley, who’s the lone player in this field without a PGA Tour victory in his career. He has a chance to match the accomplishment of Tommy Fleetwood last year, though the storyline would undoubtedly be different.
While that was one of validation for a decade-plus of close calls on the U.S.-based circuit, a Smalley win would likely be viewed as an indignity to the system. I’m not sure we have to worry about it too much, but it will make for a great talking point if he’s at least on top of the leaderboard come Thursday evening.