ATLANTA — Former British Open champion Shane Lowry is a newcomer to the Tour Championship and to the format at the FedEx Cup finale. He is No. 13 in the standings, meaning he will be at 3-under par and seven shots out of the lead when he tees off Thursday.
He has 72 holes to make that up. And from all the money games the Irishman has played at home over the years, Lowry is no stranger to giving up a few shots.
There’s one big exception.
“I give shots to my friends every day at home. But my friends are not Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele,” Lowry said Wednesday.
There is something new for everyone at East Lake, starting with the golf course. Lowry doesn’t have to worry about that. He is among nine players playing in the Tour Championship for the first time, having finished among the top 30 in FedEx Cup points.
For everyone else, it’s like being on a brand-new course.
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“I just read an article or two and the article only highlighted maybe a couple holes,” said Justin Thomas, a former FedEx Cup champion who was the last man to get into the Tour Championship. “I thought it was just those holes that were changed, not every single one of them.”
Thomas, like several other players, liked East Lake the way it was.
“We need to be fair and give it a couple years before we really know how it is,” he said.
The restoration by architect Andrew Green, based on 1949 aerials of the design, already faced one change before the Tour Championship even started. The fairway on the par-5 18th slants so much to the right that it was hard to keep drives in the fairway. And that leaves problems with a large pond on the way to the green.
Players began hitting onto the adjacent 10th fairway for a clearer – and safer – shot to the green. That lasted all of two days. PGA Tour officials decided Wednesday to add white stakes so that shots on the 18th that go to the 10th fairway are out of bounds.
The tour prefers courses to be played the way they were designed. Officials also cited a safety issue for balls sailing toward the gallery or perhaps another player.
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Chris Kirk figured optics also were involved. He said he told tour officials that players are going to do whatever they can to get the best score and it seemed to be “a no-brainer to go down 10.”
“But I really like protecting the integrity of the design of the golf course, and I think that it would have been a pretty bad look on TV if you’re finishing a golf tournament and everybody is hitting it down the wrong fairway,” Kirk said.
It’s unusual, but internal out-of-bounds has been done before, most notably at the 2021 Sony Open during the COVID-19 pandemic. There were no fans, thus no need for grandstands on the left of the 18th, and players could have gone down the 10th fairway for a better angle.
Once the first shot is in the air Thursday, all that matters now is the score.
Scheffler starts at 10-under par and with a two-shot lead over Schauffele, with Hideki Matsuyama three shots back, followed by Keegan Bradley and McIlroy. The next group of five players start six shots behind, and on down to Thomas, who will be 10 shots back.
McIlroy in 2019 and 2022 is the only player to win the FedEx Cup while having the lowest raw score at East Lake.
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Scheffler’s biggest miss was two years ago, when he started the final round with a six-shot lead, closed with a 73 and finished one shot behind McIlroy and his 66.
There’s still some debate about PGA Tour player of the year – a vote of the players – between Scheffler with his six victories (including the Masters and The Players, and an Olympic gold medal) and Schauffele with his two majors.
There’s another element to the Tour Championship. Jim Furyk will make six captain’s picks for the Presidents Cup after this week, and Thomas currently is No. 19 in the points. In some respects, this is his final audition.
“I obviously really, really want to be on that team, and I know there’s a lot of people that have a chance,” Thomas said. “It would be nice to play well for a lot of reasons this week, but that would definitely be one.”
Another possibility is Bradley, who last month was appointed Ryder Cup captain for 2025 and then an assistant to Furyk for the Presidents Cup. After being the last man into the 50-man field at the BMW Championship, he won that event and now has a legitimate shot at the $25 million prize for winning the FedEx Cup.
“It’s so amazing how quick your year can change, how golf can change,” Bradley said. “I have such an amazing opportunity here to do something really special and something that I’ve never done in my career.”
