The likes of Justin Rose and Shane Lowry will be more confident in their chances of beating Scottie Scheffler at the Tour Championship this week than in previous years.
Scheffler has enjoyed a fabulous 2025 season on the PGA Tour, winning five times including two major championship triumphs.
Meanwhile, Rose has won once with Lowry still waiting to join the winners’ circle in 2025 – maybe he has been saving his best form for the Tour Championship at East Lake this week.
Scheffler won the BMW Championship with stand-in caddie Mike Cromie on the bag last week.
The man is just relentless. Even when he doesn’t have his A game, he’s more than capable of winning big golf tournaments.
Scheffler’s iron play at the BMW Championship was distinctly average last week, by his standards at least.
However, the 29-year-old’s driving and putting ensured that he walked away from Caves Valley as the champion.
Now he will be trying to make it six wins for the 2025 season at East Lake. Scheffler has admitted that he likes the new Tour Championship format, with all 30 players starting the week on the same score.
Justin Rose and Shane Lowry comment on the Tour Championship format
Rose and Lowry ended the BMW Championship in fourth and 24th place respectively in the FedEx Cup standings.
However, both of them will have a fair shot at winning the tournament in East Lake this week, more so than they would have done in the past at least.
Both players offered their takes on the new Tour Championship format, with Rose giving his opinion first
He explained: “I think everyone is excited at the opportunity. There is always that huge pot of gold at the end of it and there’s a chance for someone to lift that iconic FedEx Cup trophy.
“Scottie is tough to beat it seems let alone with a 10 or a two or a four or a six shot lead, whatever you might have to make up on him this week.
“So from that point of view I prefer my chances of starting flat than giving away shots, it’s a nice opportunity to be in.
“But I ended up finishing fourth on the list, so I would have had a nice little advantage myself. So it depends. Everyone is going to be in a slightly different mindset on it.“
Then Lowry chimed in to the debate, echoing a very similar sentiment to Rose.
The Irishman said: “It’s nice not to have to come and give Scottie Scheffler shots, although it feels like we have been doing that in recent weeks!
“Obviously the position I am in this year, I was in a better position last year when I came in in the top 10, this year I’m coming in 24th so I would have to give a lot of shots, and it would be a very different week.
But we are coming here and everyone is starting on par and there’s only a 30-man field, so you do feel like you are coming here with a chance to do well.
“Obviously you look at the golf Scottie is playing and he is the hot favourite this week, so if you can get somewhere close to him with a few holes to play on Sunday you will have some sort of a chance.“
Rory McIlroy has a different view on the Tour Championship format
On Tuesday afternoon, Rory McIlroy addressed the media at East Lake ahead of the PGA Tour’s season finale in Atlanta.
And McIlroy admitted that his take on the Tour Championship was probably an ‘unpopular’ one.
The Northern Irishman said: “I’m maybe part of the minority. I didn’t hate the starting strokes. I thought that the player that played the best during the course of the season should have had an advantage coming in here. But the majority of people just didn’t like the starting strokes. Whether it were players or fans – I was on the PAC when we were trying to go through that, and really it was just a way to try to simplify the advantage that the top players were going to get over the course of the week instead of Steve Sands doing calculations on a white board.
“But you could also argue if it was starting strokes this week, Scottie with a two-shot lead, it probably isn’t enough considering what he’s done this year and the lead that he has in the FedExCup going into this week.
“Look, there was a lot of other stuff on the table. Match play was on the table, and that got canned for this year. That might be brought back up in the conversation for next year or the year after.
“I think it’s just hard for the players to reconcile that we play stroke play for every week of the year but then the season-ending tournament is going to be decided by match play. I think it was just hard for the players to get their heads around that.
“I don’t know, maybe that will be on the table again, who knows. Yeah, look, it’s a 72-hole stroke-play event, and that’s what we play week in and week out. That’s what’s going to determine the winner.
“I don’t know if it’s the best format, but it’s the one that we have for this week.”
I guess the bottom line here is that not everyone will be happy with the new format and it’s just a fact that you can’t please everyone all of the time.
That said, it still feels like the PGA Tour need to do some work on the Tour Championship format moving forward.
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