The PGA Tour’s three-event postseason tees off Thursday at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, with only the Top 70 in points eligible to play – there is no cut in any playoff event. The top 50 on Sunday advance to the BMW Championship next week. CBS has weekend coverage (3-6 p.m. ET) from Memphis. Fans can try golf betting on the top sports betting apps if they want to get in on the action.
Before I get to the FedExCup points race, we are in the midst of an unusual youth trend on the PGA Tour, with 24-year-old Michael Brennan winning last week’s regular-season-ending Wyndham Championship in North Carolina. It was Brennan’s second career Tour win and jumped him from No. 105 in points and well outside the playoff field to No. 47.
Brennan was the only player to jump into the top 70 at the Wyndham, with fellow American Steven Fisk the guy bumped out at 71st in points. In addition, Brennan was the third straight winner on the PGA Tour under the age of 25 after rookie Jackson Koivun a few weeks ago at the 3M Open in Minnesota and then Michael Thorbjornsen at the Rocket Classic in Detroit.
Koivun, incidentally, finished right at 70th following the Wyndham and made the playoffs despite making just six starts on Tour this year, the fewest by a player to make the postseason since Tiger Woods did so with five starts in the 2019-20 campaign. Koivun is +4200 to win this week and doing so would make him the youngest golfer ever to win a FedExCup playoff event. He needs no worse than a two-way T-7 finish to advance.
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This three-event streak of winners under the age of 25 is a first in that scenario since 2017, when said winners were Xander Schauffele (Greenbrier Classic), Bryson DeChambeau (John Deere Classic), and Spieth (British Open) and Grayson Murray (Barbasol Championship) both in the same week.
Spieth was 22 when he won the 2015 Tour Championship to hold the mark for youngest playoff event winner, and now he is sitting 54th in points. Spieth needs no worse than a solo 23rd Sunday to advance. For just a top 20, he’s +186, and he hasn’t had a top 10 all year. Spieth’s best result in the event is sixth in 2023.
The two other biggest names on the wrong side of the bubble are Max Homa (No. 52) and Sungjae Im (No. 53). Homa needs no worse than two-way tie for T-25, and Im a two-way tie for T-24. Homa was sixth here in 2023, while Im was 17th last year.
All of the top 70 in points are playing this week, other than Daniel Berger due to injury. Because he’s sitting 60th, he will not advance to the BMW Championship. A total of 11 players make their FedExCup playoff debuts: Thorbjornsen, Koivun, Kristoffer Reitan, Alex Fitzpatrick, Nicolai Hojgaard, Ryo Hisatsune, Matt McCarty, Pierceson Coody, Sudarshan Yellamaraju, Jordan Smith and Ricky Castillo.
It’s the fifth time in a row the event will be held at TPC Southwind, a par 70 at 7,288 yards. It has taken at least 15 under to win each year, and rather strangely there has been a playoff in three of the four. That there is another Sunday is +385, while the Over/Under winning total is 262.5. Dating to when this was a regular Tour event, the St. Jude Championship has had just one first-time Tour winner in the past 20 years, and that was Will Zalatoris in 2022.
In 2025, when England’s Justin Rose beat JJ Spaun in a playoff, a total of five players moved into the top 50 in points at this event. A handful of guys have won the tournament multiple times, but no one has repeated since Ernie Els in 1997.
Is this finally the week No. 1 Scottie Scheffler wins for the first time since January? He’s a typically absurd favorite at +460 and has been third and fourth the past two years. Scheffler has a whopping 11 top-five finishes this season, the most by any PGA Tour player without multiple victories since Tony Lema in 1963. BetMGM is hugely exposed on him to win this week as Scheffler leads in handle (36.8%) and tickets (12.3%). No one else is in in double digits in either.
Scheffler is -105 for a top five this week; his five second-place finishes are one shy of tying the single-season Tour mark of six, set most recently by Jack Nicklaus in 1964. Si Woo Kim (+3300) is the highest-ranked player in the FedExCup standings without a victory this season on Tour. He is No. 7, and his best result in Memphis is 14th, which came last year.