Scottie Scheffler has been the best player on the PGA Tour this season by quite some distance, but he won’t have any kind of advantage at East Lake this week for the Tour Championship.
Last season, Scheffler started the Tour Championship with a two-stroke lead over Xander Schauffele, and won the event at a canter.
However, the PGA Tour decided to change things for the 2025 edition, meaning that all 30 players will begin the tournament at East Lake on an even playing field.
It is worth noting that Scheffler is a big fan of a straight shootout at the Tour Championship with no advantages for the FedEx Cup points list leader.
He suggested that he didn’t like the feeling of beginning a tournament with a handicap advantage over the rest of the field.
Scheffler has already pocketed $23 million in FedEx Cup and Comcast business bonuses, after leading the regular season points race and topping the pile after the BMW Championship.
Now he will be hoping to finish the 2025 PGA Tour season in style at East Lake by recording his sixth victory of the year.
Scottie Scheffler shares opinion on turning the Tour Championship into match-play
Numerous ideas have been put forward regarding how to make the Tour Championship a more exciting finale.
One of the main suggestions has been for the PGA Tour to switch formats at the Tour Championship from stroke-play to match-play.
So would Scheffler be a fan of that change?
He addressed the media in Atlanta on Wednesday ahead of the Tour Championship, and responded when asked about the current format and if he thinks any changes should be made.
The world number one said: “Yeah, I think as we continue to evolve with this golf course and I think as we continue to improve the test and also improving the points system for the playoffs, I think the way it is right now, it maybe overvalues play at the end of the year in terms of qualifying for this tournament, and it may — I don’t know if cheapen is the right word, but I think having such a drastic difference in the points in the last two weeks, I think creates some inconsistencies in terms of rewarding the great seasons we have in order to qualify for the tournament.
“When I imagine the TOUR Championship, I imagine it being the most difficult tournament to qualify for in golf. I think in order to make it here, you have to have a really great season, and then the reward for making it here is having a chance to win the FedExCup, and I think it’s a great reward at the end of the season. I think having a really good golf tournament as our last event is extremely important to us.
“People have tossed around a lot of different formats for this tournament, and I think a lot of talk — there’s a lot of talk about match play and stuff like that. The reality is we’ve had a match play tournament for a number of years. We had a match play tournament for four or five years in one of the biggest growing markets in the country, and that tournament still didn’t succeed. I don’t think match play is the best way to crown a season-long champion, and I think changing the format for your last tournament is kind of quite silly.
“People love the comparisons to other sports, but golf is simply not like other sports. I’m just going to leave it at that.“
Scottie Scheffler opens up on ‘weird’ 2024 Tour Championship
Scheffler was not a fan of starting the event at East Lake with an advantage.
When asked on Wednesday how he felt last year when entering the Tour Championship with a two-stroke lead, he suggested that it was a ‘weird’ feeling.
Scheffler explained: “Yeah, it’s very weird. When you talk about expectations and stuff like that, the TOUR Championship for me was a tournament that I hadn’t won before, I had a pretty tough loss to Rory here in 2022. For me, last year this was one of the hardest tournaments for me to play just because you show up and it was like — in 2022, I remember finishing the season, going home, everyone is like, hey, man, great year, but I’m sorry about East Lake. I’m like, I’m mad I lost, too, but at the end of the day I had a pretty cool year. I played some great golf.
“It just frustrated me. It’s like, I think it was Phil Jackson said, you’re only a success at the time you’re performing a successful act, and it just irked me so bad finishing off the year where guys were like, hey, great playing, I’m sorry about how it ended. It’s like, you know what, man, I won the Masters this year, won a few other tournaments, it was a pretty good year.
“So going into 2024, coming into East Lake, Teddy brought up a good point. He’s like, hey, man, it’s tough enough sleeping on a lead. He’s like, you’ve been sleeping on the lead for this golf tournament since February. I was leading the entire year in the FedExCup, and it all comes down to a four-day tournament on a golf course that I hadn’t really played great on.
“It was a challenging week. It was stressful. But we do what we always do and just tried to focus on the execution and then ended up winning this tournament. But it was one of the hardest tournaments I had to play just because I had been sleeping on the lead for six or seven months. It’s a weird feeling.
“So that’s why I prefer this format. I think it’s great to have just a really great golf tournament to finish off the year. It’s a golf tournament that’s hard to qualify for, and it’s a great reward for guys that have had tremendous seasons on TOUR, and now we all have an opportunity to go win the FedExCup.
“Starting strokes I don’t think was the best way to crown the season-long race. I think we’re in a much better place now.“
Scheffler now knows that he will have to be at his very best from his first tee shot on Thursday, if he is to win the Tour Championship, and he obviously prefers it that way.
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