According to Wikipedia, the unofficial fact-checker of major championship top-10 finishes based on yellow-boxed results, the term \u201clame duck\u201d derives from the London Stock Exchange in the 18th\u00a0century.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was used \u2026 to refer to a stockbroker who defaulted on his debts. In 1761, Horace Walpole wrote, in a letter to Sir Horace Mann: \u2018Do you know what a Bull and a Bear and Lame Duck are?\u2019 In 1791, Mary Berry wrote that the Duchess of Devonshire\u2019s loss of \u00a350,000 in stocks was \u2018the conversation of the town,\u2019 and that her name was to be \u2018posted up as a lame duck.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Two things: 1) That\u2019s a lot of Horaces; and 2) Lame ducks have always, from the beginning, referred to people.<\/p>\n
Think about it. There\u2019s the outgoing politician who\u2019s already lost the election. The retiring official who\u2019s counting down the days. The losing football coach who\u2019s already clearing out his office with a few games left to play.<\/p>\n
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\u2019re watching this week won\u2019t be the norm moving forward.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t love the idea, but I\u2019ve also spent much of the past two decades trying to come up with better ones and I\u2019m not sure they exist, either.<\/p>\n
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\u2019d better do it soon. Let\u2019s start off the selections with a pair of \u2018em who have come close at East Lake over the years, but are each still searching for a first career FedEx Cup title.<\/p>\n
Tour Championship Outright Winner Prediction<\/p>\n
Picks: Xander Schauffele (+1200) and Collin Morikawa (+1800)<\/p>\n
So, here\u2019s the deal: For the past few weeks, I\u2019ve had Schauffele targeted for the season finale. As I\u2019ve written recently, he said prior to last month\u2019s Rocket Classic that he\u2019d been playing \u201cgolf swing\u201d 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\u2019ve 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.<\/p>\n
All of which sealed the deal for me to select him this week \u2026 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\u2019d penned an entire section on why I was going with Morikawa by a whisker over Schauffele.<\/p>\n
That didn\u2019t quite feel right, either, so what I wound up with is a chalky two-fer which shouldn\u2019t leave you too excited and doesn\u2019t make me too proud. After all, I\u2019m not a big fan of short-priced favorites \u2013 especially in limited fields \u2013 and I\u2019m even less of a fan of two short-priced favorites in the same event. That said, we\u2019re essentially getting a +750 number on 6.7 percent of this 30-man field \u2013 and 16.7 percent of the top of this board, which includes the dozen players at +2000 or shorter.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
Tour Championship Top-5 Prediction<\/p>\n
Conservative Pick: Patrick Cantlay (+240)<\/p>\n
There are few elite-level players more frustrating than Cantlay \u2013 and I mean that in a \u201cI\u2019m not mad, I\u2019m just disappointed\u201d 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 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\u2019s errand to suggest that Cantlay\u2019s second-place finish at the BMW Championship \u2013 during which he neither faded after a strong start nor back-doored into it on the weekend, posting scores of 67-65-66-68 \u2013 is going to turn things around, but it\u2019s at least a step in the right direction.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Aggressive Pick: Justin Rose (+550)<\/p>\n
If there\u2019s anyone who understands how to get his game to peak for a single week, it\u2019s a guy who\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
After a midseason switch to unknown club manufacturer McLaren was widely castigated, he\u2019s back to an elite level with those irons, which should once again work nicely at East Lake.<\/p>\n
Tour Championship Top-10 Prediction<\/p>\n
Conservative Pick: Gary Woodland (+175)<\/p>\n
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 \u2013 at least for this one. Case in point: Schauffele (+1200) and Morikawa (+1800) are only a few points shorter than they\u2019ve been in bigger events, while Woodland\u2019s +3300 seems egregiously short by comparison.<\/p>\n
That said, there\u2019s 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\u2019d clinched a spot in the Tour Championship for the first time in seven years.<\/p>\n
At the end of a long season, when guys are clearly running on fumes, I don\u2019t mind making a few plays based solely on intangibles. Being in this week\u2019s field means something special to Woodland and for that reason alone, I\u2019m banking on this being another solid performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Aggressive Pick: Jacob Bridgeman (+180)<\/p>\n