The PGA Tour’s 2022-2023 season will conclude at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia with the finale of the FedExCup Playoffs. The top 30 golfers in the FedExCup standings will compete for an $18 million winning prize with players guaranteed at least $500,000 just for making it to the Tour Championship. Rory McIlroy will look to successfully defend the Tour Championship he won last season by one stroke over Scottie Scheffler and Sungjae Im.
The oldest golf course in the city of Atlanta, East Lake is a city course that was the home track of the legendary golfer Bobby Jones. It is a lush old-school parkland course with narrow fairways, difficult Bermuda rough, uneven lies, and fast greens. It is known as a risk/reward type of course, and is one of the more difficult ones on Tour with birdies typically tough to come by. It has been the permanent home of the Tour Championship since 2004, and it has been held at East Lake 21 times since 1998.
Unlike every other Tour event where all players start on a level playing field at even par, the field this week will begin with staggered scores based on their position in the FedExCup points ranking list. Despite the scorn of most golf fans who despise the staggered start, this will be the fifth consecutive year of utilizing the “Starting Strokes” format which sees players start between 10-under and even par depending on their ranking.
Certain players this week like Sam Burns and Jordan Spieth who are starting ten shots behind have no realistic chance of overtaking anyone near the top of the board. This limits the excitement and drama of this final event and typically makes it one of the more unwatchable golf tournaments of the year.
Betting Strategies
The honest truth is that a 30-player event that has a staggered start scoring handicap is as tough as it gets for betting purposes. This format basically eliminates at least 20 golfers from having a chance to win. Part of this is because East Lake is a very difficult course on which to score and mount a comeback. Because of this, some books offer winning odds without the staggered start. In my opinion, that is the best method of approaching this event, but even that has its pitfalls. For example, with every player guaranteed at least $500,000 just for making it to East Lake, how motivated will any golfer be once Sunday comes and they are eight shots behind the leader?
All that aside, the most important stats for this week that I weighted more heavily in the model were Total Driving, SG: Approach (emphasis on 200+), Good Drive %, and Par 4 Scoring. As simple as it sounds, if you don’t hit fairways at East Lake, you won’t hit many greens. Similar to prior events at Sedgefield and TPC Southwind, the Bermuda rough is extremely penal.
Along with those metrics, and knowing I was going with a much lighter card this week, past performance at East Lake was one of the main things I analyzed. With that in mind, Xander Schauffele has been the best player on this course by far over the last few years gaining an average of 1.73 strokes per round on the field (24 rounds). Behind him, Rory McIlroy is the clear number two at East Lake gaining an average of 1.36 strokes in 28 rounds since 2015.
Most Important Stats For Success at East Lake Golf Club
*In order of importance
- Total Driving
- Fairways Gained
- SG: Approach
- Proximity: 200+
- SG: Par 4
- Driving Distance
- Good Drive % (Bermuda Rough)
- Birdie or Better %
- SG: Putting (Bermuda)
- Bogey Avoidance
Weather Forecast – Atlanta, Georgia
Tour Championship – Final Model
In each preview article and on Discord, I present my final model, which gives a detailed player ranking of the most important stats and splits for the week. My modeling is built around the PGA’s Strokes Gained data, which is divided into SG: Off the Tee (OTT), SG: Approach (APP), SG: Around the Green (ARG), and SG: Putting (P). Learn more about Strokes Gained and why it can be so useful in analyzing the past and predicting future performance. Many of the individual splits will be posted on my Twitter feed, with the final model exclusively published here for subscribers.
Outright Betting Selections
*Lines accurate at the time of publication.
Winner Without Starting Strokes
Xander Schauffele +1200
With Schauffele starting seven strokes off the lead, we can use that, along with his elite course history here at East Lake to our advantage. Since 2015, he has gained a whopping total of 41.6 strokes at this course and has never finished worse than seventh in performance without starting strokes. He has bettered his opening position almost every year here including finishing first in 2017 and 2020 thanks to his aggressive play and perfect skill-set for this course. Another reason to back Schauffele is his past performance in no-cut events where he also leads the field in strokes gained average over the past six years.
(2u) BetMGM
Sungjae Im +3500
Im was spectacular here last year finishing second overall and gaining 6.9 strokes ball-striking. After going through a slump in the middle part of the summer, Im has come to life in recent weeks starting with a 14th-place finish at the Wyndham Championship and following that up with consecutive top-10s in the first two legs of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. He has gained 11.4 strokes ball-striking during that three-week span. Starting eight strokes off the lead will force him to play more aggressively than usual and could lead him toward the top of the “Without Starting Strokes” leaderboard.
(0.68u) DraftKings
This article is intended for entertainment purposes and adult users only. Call 1-800-GAMBLER if you have a gambling problem.
Photo by Sam Greenwood/Getty Images