Tour Championship preview: five players control their fate
The Tour Championship, the fourth and final FedEx Cup event, professional golf’s version of the play-offs, gets underway Thursday at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia.
And the magic number seems to be five.
The top five players in the FedEx Cup rankings are the only players who control their own destiny. This means that a win by any of these players, not exactly a who’s who of professional golf, means that
that player will walk home with the trophy and the generous payout of $10m.
The top five in order are as follows: Matt Kuchar, Dustin Johnson, Charley Hoffman, Steve Stricker, and Paul Casey. If any player outside the top five were to walk away with the FedEx Cup, he would have
to count on one or more of his competitors putting in a weak performance.
For example, a win by defending champion Phil Mickelson, currently ranked 9th and easily the biggest name in the top 10, would not guarantee him the FedEx Cup and the payout. In what is a complicated points
system that gets tweaked seemingly every year, he would need to hope that a handful of the players ahead of him have bad weeks.
So let’s look at this interesting collection of players who find themselves in the enviable position of not having to worry about the others. For them, the equation is very simple: win the event, win the
play-offs. And with this year's unpredictable slew of golfing results, it could just be any one of them who can win it all.
Matt Kuchar
Kuchar may have golf’s version of home-court advantage. He lives only a few minutes from East Lake and played golf for Georgia Tech, located nearby in Atlanta. He has yet to finish outside the top-15 in
any play-off event and should be feeling better after battling laryngitis last week at the BMW Championship, where he still managed to finish in a tie for third.
Dustin Johnson
Johnson redeemed himself at the BMW Championship by taking home the trophy after a clutch birdie on the 17th hole to edge Paul Casey by one stroke. His best previous finish in this year’s
play-offs was a tie for ninth at the Barclay’s, the first event. Johnson is a power hitter, averaging 308 yards off the tee for the season, good for third longest on tour. However, his accuracy off the tee could be an issue as he has only hit the fairway 57
per cent of the time this season.
Charley Hoffman
Hoffman is not a household name but his impressive final round 62 at the Deutsche Bank Championship, the second event of the play-offs, made everyone take notice. His final round included 11 birdies and
was his first victory on tour since 2007. His two other finishes in the play-offs have been mediocre but he has proven that he has the ability to get hot when he needs to.
Steve Stricker
Stricker is a tough competitor, always bringing his A-game to the play-offs when it counts the most. In his 15 play-off tournaments, Stricker has 10 top-10 finishes. His recent form has been solid, with
a tie for third, a ninth-place finish, and a tie for eighth in the first three play-off events.
Paul Casey
Casey may have some extra motivation in him this week. After being passed over as a captain’s pick by European team captain Colin Montgomerie for the upcoming Ryder Cup in October, Casey may try to show
the European squad what exactly they’ll miss out on. And momentum is on his side, having finished second to Johnson last week at the BMW Championship in a close finish.
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