Who's ready for some playoff golf?
The 18th edition of the PGA Tour Playoffs gets underway this week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, home of the 8th Wonder of the World, the Bass Pro Shop Pyramid (honestly, they should host TGL matches there).
We come into this year's FedEx Cup much like last year, expecting leader Scottie Scheffler to continue his dominance to a season-long championship. While that will most likely happen, especially with his closest competition, Rory McIlroy, opting to skip the event, the tournament itself should be rather fascinating.
A course very familiar to golf fans from numerous iterations of this event, TPC Southwind favors strong putting and accurate driving from its players, and almost completely ignores good scrambling play.
In last year's event, Hideki Matsuyama won while finishing 68th out of 70 in strokes gained around the green that week. If you want to play well, get the ball in the hole.
Last week's picks were overall solid, with seven of the nine finishing in the top 15. These limited-field events have been where a lot of the success of the rankings has come this year, so getting back to a smaller field should set up well for us.
Honorable Mentions: Ludvig Aberg, Wyndham Clark, Lucas Glover, Viktor Hovland, Sepp Straka
9. Chris Gotterup
Gotterup took a break last week after a red-hot July, and he should come into this week feeling very confident about his game, especially since a Ryder Cup spot may have his name on it right now.
In his last five starts, Gotterup has been one of the best drivers of the golf ball out of all the players in the field, and has been averaging nearly +2 strokes gained total over his last 20 rounds. The 26-year-old has found his groove at exactly the right time, and another charge up the leaderboard could be in the cards for him come Sunday afternoon.
8. J.J. Spaun
Hey, do you all remember when J.J. Spaun won the U.S. Open this year? We're not even two months removed, and it's very evident that Spaun's triumph at Oakmont is going to be the forgotten major of 2025.
Since his major triumph, Spaun has played much better than I would have expected, including a T14 at the Travelers and a T23 at The Open Championship. He's shown that his game can show up in big spots, and he's not afraid of tracking down the big names, so we could be in for yet another Spaun surprise.
7. Harry Hall
Harry Hall may be the most consistently decent-to-good player on Tour right now after yet another top-20 finish with a T15 at Wyndham last week.
Hall's placement in these rankings is pretty consistently a "he shouldn't be finishing so well at these tournaments, but he just keeps doing it" play, but maybe he breaks through for the win this week.
In his last 20 starts, Hall is ninth in the field in average strokes gained per round. Here are some names Hall is currently above: Tommy Fleetwood, Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa, Xander Schauffele, and Ludvig Aberg, to name a few (at another point, I'll get into my "Harry Hall should be in the Ryder Cup over Ludvig Aberg" take). He's been too good lately, and I can't not put him on the list.
6. Ben Griffin
Ben Griffin army, we rise at dawn once more. Finally bouncing back after a couple of missed cuts with a T11 last week, Griffin's performance portends well because he didn't really play all that well last week, and still found himself close to the top of the leaderboard.
While he may not have the same heat as he did earlier this summer, Ben Griffin is a genuine threat any week he tees it up right now. Considering how well he's performed in the signature events as of late, the spotlight won't be too bright for Griffin. And if it is, he has his aviators to block it out.
5. Harris English
Fun fact: Harris English has won on this course before, winning the old FedEx St. Jude Classic in 2013 for his first career victory.
A true flusher of the golf ball, English has been playing some really good golf lately, with his last start being his runner-up to Scottie at The Open (for the mortals, Harris English is the 2025 Champion Golfer of the Year). There are no holes in English's game, as it can travel to all types of courses, so he should find himself back in contention once again.
4. Robert MacIntyre
In his three starts at TPC Southwind, Robert MacIntyre has gotten progressively better, going from T59 to T15 to T7 last year. MacIntyre can get a little crooked off the tee, which does worry me a little bit for this week, but the Scotsman has been able to figure things out recently.
A T7 at The Open should have Bobby Mac in good spirits, and his strong play here should lead to him threatening come Sunday.
3. Russell Henley
Henley is coming into this week on a streak of four straight top-10s, and here are where those finishes occurred: T5 at Memorial, T10 at the U.S. Open, T2 at Travelers, and T10 at The Open.
The strongest run of form since leading up to his win at Bay Hill, Henley feels primed for win number two of the season, and his game fits TPC Southwind perfectly. Of the chasing pack behind Scottie, Russell Henley is the one that I feel the best about this week, and if he comes outside of the top 10 (the top 5, really), then I'll be shocked.
2. Matt Fitzpatrick
I don't know who's hotter right now: Chris Gotterup or Matt Fitzpatrick.
Had Fitzpatrick not played well at Wyndham, then his form could've been written off as playing well on an uncommon style of course, and it doesn't mean anything. But, with repeated strong finishes in America as well as overseas, Fitzpatrick is as close to his 2022 form as possible right now.
The 2022 U.S. Open champion should be finding his way to Bethpage with his recent form and could find himself atop the leaderboard this week as well.
1. Scottie Scheffler
Do you think that if/when Rory McIlroy watched Oppenheimer, and he saw the final scene where Oppenheimer finally feels the full weight of just what he had done in creating the nuclear bomb, that McIlroy felt like he was looking at himself when he said that Scottie should switch to a mallet putter?
The golf world has never been the same and never will be the same. You know, his ranking in this week's rankings also matches where I'd put Scottie if I had to rank all of the golfer cameos in Happy Gilmore 2 (Will Zalatoris is a really close second, though).
I've run out of words for him. The Athletic's SCOTTIE index shows how good he's been, and just never bet against Scottie Scheffler. He is inevitable.