Hopefully this week gives us a little bit more drama. I really hoped that, after the craziness of the third hole for both Scottie Scheffler and Sam Burns, we'd get a bit more of an interesting Sunday at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. But instead, we got classic Scottie dominance to kickstart the PGA Tour's FedEx Cup playoffs. The top 50 now get to escape the Memphis heat and travel to St. Louis for this year's BMW Championship.
We're back at Bellerive Country Club for the first time since the 2018 PGA Championship, maybe best remembered for Tiger's Sunday 64. A big ballpark, the long hitters are going to have a great time around Bellerive. However, you can't just bomb-and-gouge your way around. If we look back at the 2018 PGA, Brooks Koepka was above-average in both driving distance and accuracy en route to his victory. You won't be able to get away with errant tee shots this week, so plan accordingly.
Scottie Scheffler FINALLY paid off for us once again last week, after a whole season of near-misses with him. We're looking to get hot at the right time and win the FedEx Cup like 2014 Billy Horschel, so let's keep the good times rolling in St. Louis this week.
Honorable Mentions: Sungjae Im, Jake Knapp, Rory McIlroy
9. Tommy Fleetwood
I truly don't know how this has happened, but Tommy Fleetwood hasn't finished outside of the top 15 in any of his starts going back to The Memorial in June. After an early stretch where he looked a little lost, Fleetwood has returned to his elite talent level that we have seen for the last decade. So why is he so low in the rankings this week?
Because he's still Tommy Fleetwood, the man who can't close on the PGA Tour. It would be a miracle to get another win out of him this week, but he's probably just going to steal the FedEx Cup again like last year.
8. Gary Woodland
The first man out of East Lake, as things currently stand, the Gary Woodland pick here is 50 percent playing to make the top 30, and 50 percent past performance. At the 2018 PGA Championship, Woodland was the 36-hole leader at Bellerive, finishing at a respectable T6 (his second-best career major finish).
Every couple of starts, the former Jayhawk likes to make his way into the mix and sets himself up for a weekend run. Especially since he's had good fortune at Bellerive in the past, he can easily play his way into the Tour Championship this week.
7. Cameron Young
I have terrible news for all of the Cam Young defenders: he has lost his putter again. Going back to The Memorial, Young's best putting performance per strokes gained came at The Open, where he gained less than one stroke total across the event.
With that being said, he still managed to come up one shot short of a major while barely being an above-average putter. His ball-striking is still there; he just needs to get the putter to cooperate. Young's distance should be a major weapon this week as well, as long as he finds the short grass.
6. Si Woo Kim
Speaking of guys who can't putt, let's talk about Si Woo Kim, who lost to Scottie Scheffler by eight shots last week. If I had a nickel for every time that happened, I'd have two nickels. Which isn't a lot, but it's weird that it happened twice. He's consistently one of the best ball strikers on Tour, but he just can't get the ball in the hole at the end of the day. On a course where there's not a lot of relevant recent history to go off of, I'll fall back on elite ball striking for my picks.
5. Patrick Cantlay
The biggest thing that has been fueling Patrick Cantlay's return to prominence on Tour has been his irons, which he flashed again last week en route to a T12 finish. The biggest worry I have is that Cantlay's ceiling in events seems to have fallen, as he still hasn't managed to crack a top-five finish yet this season. He's going to need a big weekend to make it back to the Tour Championship, so we may see Ryder Cup Patrick Cantlay come out this week and make a run.
4. Xander Schauffele
Another week, another top-10 finish that I don't think anyone knew happened for Xander Schauffele. Xander feels like he's entered his Dustin Johnson era, where he's been so consistent for so long that his name being on the leaderboard doesn't faze anyone anymore, and his winning is the only way to feel alive anymore (ironically, DJ has something to help with that).
Xander's putter is agreeing with him again, and that's going to be a major help for him this weekend, as he looks for his first win of the year. He's too good not to consider, and he may be the best player on Tour that hasn't won the FedEx Cup yet. Maybe this week will kickstart a run for Xander.
3. Sam Burns
We need to talk about Sam Burns on Sundays. First The Masters, then The Open, and now last week, where Burns completely faded into irrelevancy in the final round (not even mentioning last year's U.S. Open and choking in the playoff in Canada to Ryan Fox).
I want to believe that he is going to win more, and he has the talent to win more, but Burns needs to fix this Sunday mental block that he has. His Pressure Tool chart on DataGolf is not a good visual at all, and he needs to turn it around. That being said, he's one of the hottest players in the world right now and will probably pull off another top-five finish.
2. Hideki Matsuyama
Hideki Matsuyama pulled off another top-10 finish last weekend while being negative around the greens and with his putter. He was never going to catch Scottie, but there's a realistic outcome where Hideki ends up beating out Si Woo if he's just average in those categories.
If you played out Hideki Matsuyama's career 100 times, what percentile does this version rank in? I'd have to imagine it's in the bottom half, maybe even as low as the 25th percentile. Infinitely talented and frustrating, Hideki seems primed to finally pick up another win. Or just squander his good form once again. It's a true coin flip at this point.
1. Scottie Scheffler
He's baaaaaaaack. We can honestly probably just call the playoffs quits now, because I think Scottie is going to sweep all three events and win so much money in the month of August. Scottie finally just did everything well again (aside from one bunker shot that was far more unlucky than bad), and he looked like the Scheffler we expected to see all of 2026.
With that one win, he probably took the lead in the Player of the Year race again, and he can truly slam that door shut over the next couple weeks. I think he wins by four this week.
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