The top 70 golfers in the FedExCup standings will travel to Tennessee for the FedEx St. Jude Championship for the opening playoff event of the PGA Tour’s season-long points competition. Nestled in the rolling countryside just southeast of Memphis sits TPC Southwind, which is hosting a playoff event for the second consecutive year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is a course that is infamous for its “water balls” and one that historically rewards the best ball-strikers in the world. In the past six events played at this course, winners have included some of the best ball-strikers in the world including Will Zalatoris, Justin Thomas, Brooks Koepka, Dustin Johnson, Abraham Ancer, and Daniel Berger (twice). TPC Southwind is a course that favors players who are both familiar and competent on Bermuda grass surfaces as its firm and fast greens and its penal rough thrive in the heat and humidity of the American South.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rory McIlroy gave a quality summation of what it takes to have success at TPC Southwind. “If you do hit it in the rough, it’s going to be hard to control your ball from there. So first thing, you put it in the fairway and put it in play, but I think the biggest thing around here is your approach play. I think sort of seems to be a lot of approach shots between like 140 yards to 170 yards, so that’s a key distance this week. If you can sort of get your pitching wedge through 7-iron dialed in and get those working really well, I think you’ll always have a good chance around this course.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Continuing with last year’s newly devised playoff structure, only the top 50 in the FedExCup standings after this week will advance to the BMW Championship. With such a small field, this will be the second consecutive year that the opening event of the playoffs will not have a cut. Since this course has hosted a PGA Tour event every year since 1989 we have plenty of course history and data to rely on this week. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With $20 million in prize money on the line, there is plenty of motivation for the top players to not treat this week as a warm-up for the following two playoff events. Players outside of the top-50 can boost their place in the standings with a good performance this week as points are quadrupled for these first two playoff events, with the winner earning 2,000 points and 70th place earning only 12 points.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As for the 70 players that comprise this field, every eligible player will be in attendance including each of the top eight ranked players in the world, Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy, Ludvig Aberg, Wyndham Clark, Collin Morikawa, Viktor Hovland and Patrick Cantlay. The biggest names staying home who finished outside the top 70 include Keith Mitchell, Rickie Fowler, Nicolai Hojgaard, and last year’s winner here, Lucas Glover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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Designed with tournament in golf mind, TPC Southwind was built in 1988 and was designed by Ron Prichard, in consultation with Tour professionals Fuzzy Zoeller and Hubert Green. Prichard is well-known in golf architecture circles as the “father of restoration”, most notably with certain Donald Ross-designed courses. Though not a restoration, it is one of the more difficult “TPC” courses played on Tour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
TPC Southwind itself was first renovated in 2004 to modernize the course and make it more challenging. 11 new tee boxes were added along with 125 trees and 15 new bunkers. Three of the water hazards were also enlarged. Even more changes occurred back in 2020. This time, most of the upgrades were related to adding, resizing, and re-edging numerous bunkers. There were also a few holes such as the 3rd and the 7th that were extended fifteen-plus yards.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1989, the course began hosting the Federal Express St. Jude Classic just one year after it was built and would continue to do so through 2018. From 2019-2021, the course hosted the World Golf Championship (WGC) FedEx St. Jude Invitational. 2022 marked the first year TPC Southwind hosted the first round of the FedExCup Playoffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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We have partnered with Underdog<\/a> to bring you an easy way to claim a FREE, no-strings-attached 90 days of Premium Access to Betsperts Golf,<\/em> plus up to $250 in bonuses when you deposit! Click here<\/a> to learn more!<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n This includes the average finish position and Strokes Gained per round in each category. Players are sorted by SG: Total. TPC Southwind is the 14th least predictive course on Tour.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 2024 FedEx St. Jude Championship at TPC Southwind – Preview<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":12182,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":""},"bs_types":[14,15],"bs_tags":[29,73,130],"class_list":["post-12177","article","type-article","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","bs_type-betting","bs_type-fantasy","bs_tag-golf-betting","bs_tag-golf-dfs","bs_tag-st-jude-championship"],"acf":false,"featured_image":"https:\/\/api.betspertsgolf.com\/raw-forum\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/media_1698f20241cacf7c5d37117dc66ce999f43837a50.jpeg","tags_list":[{"id":29,"name":"Golf Betting","slug":"golf-betting"},{"id":73,"name":"Golf DFS","slug":"golf-dfs"},{"id":130,"name":"St. Jude Championship","slug":"st-jude-championship"}],"types_list":[{"id":14,"name":"Betting"},{"id":15,"name":"Fantasy"}],"bs_author":{"name":"Ron Klos","profile_image":"https:\/\/api.betspertsgolf.com\/raw-forum\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/02\/Ron-Klos-150x150.jpg"},"bs_term_name":null,"is_paid":"true","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/api.betspertsgolf.com\/raw-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article\/12177","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/api.betspertsgolf.com\/raw-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/article"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/api.betspertsgolf.com\/raw-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/article"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/api.betspertsgolf.com\/raw-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/api.betspertsgolf.com\/raw-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/api.betspertsgolf.com\/raw-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12177"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"bs_type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/api.betspertsgolf.com\/raw-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bs_types?post=12177"},{"taxonomy":"bs_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/api.betspertsgolf.com\/raw-forum\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/bs_tags?post=12177"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Finish Position and Strokes Gained Event History (2015-2023)<\/h2>\n\n\n\n