New year, same result. After a full PGA Tour golf season (which has been a bit shorter since the PGA Tour returned to a calendar-based schedule), Scottie Scheffler is back at the top of the FedEx Cup standings heading into the final event, the Tour Championship at East Lake.

Scheffler has dominated this year, winning six times on the PGA Tour, including his second Masters title, and winning the gold medal at the Paris Olympics earlier this month.

He leads second-place Xander Schauffele by nearly 1,200 FedEx Cup points and third-place Hideki Matsuyama by over 2,700 points, roughly the same lead Matsuyama has over 50th-ranked player Eric Cole.

But even after a historic season, Scheffler will begin the Tour Championship in the same position as the previous two editions: two strokes ahead at 10 under par.

This is the sixth year of the Tour Championship’s handicap format, which gives players starting points based on their position in the FedEx Cup standings at the start of the week. Scheffler will begin this week at East Lake two strokes ahead of Schauffele and 10 strokes ahead of Justin Thomas, the last man in the field at No. 30 in the leaderboard.

The change was made because under the old format, a player could win the Tour Championship but not the FedEx Cup. It was also difficult to calculate the points and keep track for the viewer at home.

This means you no longer have to worry about points, and whoever wins the Tour Championship, starting strokes included, gets the FedEx Cup and the $25 million first place prize.

This is what the starting strokes look like this year.

Starting results of the 2024 Tour Championship

10 under: Scottie Scheffler
Eight under: Xander Schauffele
Seven under: Hideki Matusyama
Six under: Keegan Bradley
Five under: Ludvig Aberg
Four under: Rory McIlroy, Collin Morikawa, Wyndham Clark, Sam Burns, Patrick Cantlay
Three under: Sungjae Im, Sahith Theegala, Shane Lowry, Adam Scott, Tony Finau
Two under: Byeong Hun An, Viktor Hovland, Russell Henley, Akshay Bhatia, Robert MacIntyre
One under: Billy Horschel, Tommy Fleetwood, Sepp Straka, Matthieu Pavon, Taylor Pendrith
Even: Chris Kirk, Tom Hoge, Aaron Rai, Christiaan Bezuidenhout, Justin Thomas

Now, you might think that the player in the lead would have a significant advantage, but in fact the top seed has only won the Tour Championship twice in the last five editions of the format. Scheffler himself has never prevailed when leading by two shots in the last two seasons.

In his two most recent FedEx Cup victories, Rory McIlroy recovered from a five- and six-stroke deficit at the start of the week to claim the trophy (and the big first-place win) on Sunday night. Last year, Viktor Hovland was two strokes behind Scheffler when he lapped everyone at East Lake to win his first FedEx Cup.

You can watch the action on Thursday and Friday from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET on the Golf Channel. Saturday’s broadcast runs from 1:00 p.m. to 2:30 p.m. on the Golf Channel and 2:30 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. on NBC, and the final round on Sunday runs from noon to 1:30 p.m. on the Golf Channel and 1:30 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. on NBC.

Jack Hirsh

Golf.com Publisher

Jack Hirsh is an assistant editor at GOLF. Jack is a Pennsylvania native and graduated from Penn State University in 2020 with a degree in broadcast journalism and political science. He was captain of his high school golf team and recently returned to the program as head coach. Jack also continues to try to stay competitive in local amateurs. Before joining GOLF, Jack worked for two years at a television station in Bend, Oregon, primarily as a multimedia journalist/reporter, but also as a producer, anchor, and even a weather reporter. You can reach him at [email protected].