Tag: 2021 Tour Championship

Patrick Cantlay not a fan of the PIP, says it’s leading to some unruly fan behavior

“If you have 98 percent of the 10,000 people in the gallery pulling for you, the other 200 can cause problems,” Cantlay said.

ATLANTA – Patrick Cantlay has some sympathy for Bryson DeChambeau.

He has nothing but apathy for the PGA Tour’s Player Impact Program, which was created this year by the PGA Tour and rewards the top 10 players measured by several metrics of popularity and slices a $40 million pie between those top needle-movers.

Cantlay played 24 holes alongside DeChambeau on Sunday in the BMW Championship at Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills, Maryland – 18 in regulation and then six more in an instant playoff classic he would win with a 17-foot birdie. Throughout the day, DeChambeau was subjected to unruly fan behavior featuring regular taunts of “Brooksie,” a byproduct of the tiff DeChambeau has had with Brooks Koepka for more than two years.

“Naturally, of course, there is some sympathy because you don’t want to see anybody have a bunch of people be against you or even be heckled,” Cantlay said Wednesday ahead of Thursday’s start of the Tour Championship, the FedEx Cup Playoffs finale. As a result of his win in the BMW Championship, Cantlay took over the lead and has a two-shot advantage heading into the first round.

“Unfortunately, it might be a symptom of a larger problem, which is social media driven and which is potentially Player Impact Program derived,” Cantlay added. “I think when you have people that go for attention-seeking maneuvers, you leave yourself potentially open to having the wrong type of attention, and I think maybe that’s where we’re at and it may be a symptom of going for too much attention.”

Read Patrick Cantlay’s and Rory McIlroy’s full comments

DeChambeau is certainly a regular in social media circles, posting plenty of videos of his workouts, speed drills and his Herculean work with the driver. He’s a popular figure in the social media biosphere but is also a frequent target for criticism for his posts on Facebook, Instagram, and such.

“It can be awesome, too, because if you succeed and you act perfect all the time and you do the perfect things all the time, and then you also go for the right attention-seeking moves, you get like double bonus points because everyone loves you and you’re on the perfect side of it,” Cantlay said. “I think it’s just a very live-by-the-sword, die-by-the-sword type of deal. And when you leave it to a jury, you don’t know what’s going to happen.

“So it’s hard to get all 12 people on a jury on your side.

“Or even if you have 98 percent of the 10,000 people in the gallery pulling for you,” Cantlay said. “The other 200 can cause problems.”

“If those people have had enough to drink or feel emboldened enough to say something because they want to impress the girl they’re standing next to, then, yeah, like, you’re in trouble,” Cantlay said. “People are going to say bad things.

“If you only have 2 percent of the people that are very against you because you’re polarizing and because you’re attention-seeking, then you’re kind of dead because those people are going to be loud, and they’re going to want to say something to get under your skin.

“Maybe people have watched too much Happy Gilmore and they don’t feel enough sympathy for Shooter McGavin. I don’t know. I don’t know the answer.”

Cantlay said he doesn’t think he’s doing well in the PIP. He’s more interested in being true to himself and being the best golfer he can be.

“I may not be the cookie cutter golfer,” he said. “I may not look or have the same expressions as everybody else, but I think if I’m true to myself and I just act naturally for me, it will come across that I’m being natural, and if I play well and am myself, I think it will all work out.

“I don’t get too caught up in under-appreciated or unsung or things like that. I don’t think it helps. And so I think it does help to practice and focus as much as I can to produce the best golf I possibly can.”

Now, if he were to earn a share of the PIP millions, he knows what he’d do.

“I would be compelled to give all that money back to the fans that made it possible, because there’s no way a person like me should be able to get into the top 10 of the PIP if not for people out there deciding that they want me to be in the top 10 and to try to get some of that PIP money for themselves,” Cantlay said. “Because if I win PIP money, I am going to give it back to the people that made it possible in some way, shape or form. I won’t take any of the PIP money. I think it’s kind of ridiculous and I think it’s, when I said there’s a symptom of a larger problem, I think that’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

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Tour Championship matchups and PGA Tour prop bets picks

Looking at the best value prop bets in the Tour Championship odds, with matchups, placings, first-round leader PGA Tour picks, predictions.

The 2020-21 PGA Tour season ends this weekend with the $15 million first-place prize for the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. The top 30 golfers from the season-long FedEx Cup standings are in attendance for the finale. Below, we’ll look for the best value prop bets in the 2021 Tour Championship odds, with matchups, placings and first-round leader PGA Tour picks and predictions.

Patrick Cantlay begins the Tour Championship at 10-under par as the top seed in the FedEx Cup standings. Tony Finau, who won The Northern Trust two weeks ago, is second and starts the week 2 strokes behind Cantlay at minus-8. Jon Rahm, who’s No. 1 in the Golfweek/Sagarin rankings, starts at minus-6 from fourth in the FedEx Cup standings.

For full information on starting strokes, head to Golfweek.com.

Dustin Johnson will start the week from 15th in the FedEx Cup standings in his defense of the season-long title. Xander Schauffele was the low 72-hole scorer at East Lake GC last year.

2021 Tour Championship picks: Matchups (72 holes)

Odds provided by Tipico Sportsbook; access USA TODAY Sports’ betting odds for a full list. Lines last updated Wednesday at 11:10 a.m. ET.

Xander Schauffele (-110) vs. Rory McIlroy

Schauffele and McIlroy rank 1-2 among those with at least 10 rounds played at East Lake GC in average strokes gained on the field per round, with 3.56 and 2.91 strokes gained per round, respectively. McIlroy is a two-time FedEx Cup winner, but Schauffele won here in 2017 and was the low 72-hole scorer last year.

McIlroy’s in better form off of a fourth-place finish at last week’s BMW Championship, but Schauffele’s course history can’t be overlooked. Schauffele (-110) is the pick in an evenly priced matchup with both golfers starting the week at minus-2.

Joaquin Niemann (+105) vs. Corey Conners

Conners tied for eighth at The Northern Trust before a T-22 finish last week, while Niemann went T-47 and T-29 in the first two playoff events, respectively. The Canadian is 21st in the FedEx Cup standings and the Chilean is 24th, but they will both start at minus-1 Thursday morning.

Both are evenly matched off the tee; however, Niemann has been the superior putter over the course of the 2020-21 PGA Tour with an average of 0.44 Strokes Gained: Putting per round. Conners is averaging just 0.02 SG: Putting per round for the season and lost 0.17 strokes per round on the greens last week.

Take the plus-money value in Niemann (+105).

2021 Tour Championship picks: Placings

Top 5: Xander Schauffele (+350)

Schauffele is beginning the week 17th in the season-long standings and 8 strokes behind Cantlay; however, he’ll need to make up a modest 3 strokes on pre-tournament fifth-seed, Cameron Smith.

Given his record at East Lake, the 2017 Tour Championship winner can make up that difference within the first round.

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Top American: Tony Finau (+450)

Rahm is the pre-tournament betting favorite with or without starting strokes despite beginning the week 4 back of Cantlay and 2 back of Finau. American Bryson DeChambeau starts at minus-7.

I’m fading Cantlay this week, as he has averaged just 0.31 strokes gained on the field per round over 12 rounds at East Lake. Finau ranks seventh among all players with a minimum of five rounds played at this venue with 2.06 strokes gained per round. He needs to make up just 2 strokes on Cantlay and enters with a 1 shot lead over DeChambeau.

Finau comes in third by the odds in this 18-man pool as an excellent value two weeks removed from his first win in five years.

2021 Tour Championship picks: First-round leader

Jon Rahm (+650)

The oddsmakers are clearly expecting Rahm to erase his 4-shot deficit over the course of the week, but there remains value in the FRL bet, where he’s fourth by the odds.

He began each of the last two weeks with a share of the first-round lead at minus-8 after going 64-68-66 over the final three rounds of the British Open. He has averaged 2.18 strokes gained on the field over his 16 career rounds at East Lake, and he leads all golfers with an average of 2.57 total strokes gained on the field per round for the 2020-21 season.

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Tiger Woods shares epic Tour Championship highlight video while wishing the field good luck

Tiger has a highlight or two from his time playing the Tour Championship.

Tiger Woods may not be teeing it up this week in Atlanta, but that doesn’t mean he’s not thinking about the PGA Tour’s season finale.

The 82-time winner on Tour took to Twitter on Wednesday to wish luck to the 30 players competing in this week’s Tour Championship, the final of three events in the Tour’s season-ending FedEx Cup Playoffs. In true Tiger fashion, he also had to remind everyone just how well he’s played in the event.

Accompanying the tweet is a 58-second video that shows highlights from his win in 2007 – where he carded a front-nine 28 – and his win in 2018, including when Larry Fitzgerald stopped a media scrum to watch Woods make an eagle on his phone.

Woods has three Tour Championship wins, but only two at East Lake in 2007 and 2018. His first win at the event came in 1998 in his second year on Tour at Champions Golf Club in Houston. East Lake has been the tournament’s exclusive host since 2004, with several courses hosting between 1987 and 1996. From 1997-2004, the Tour Championship alternated between Champions and East Lake.

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Patrick Cantlay looking to ride his putting heater to $15 million grand prize in FedEx Cup finale

“If he putts the way he putted last week for the rest of his career,” Rory McIlroy said, “we have no chance.”

ATLANTA – How alarmingly good was Patrick Cantlay’s putting last week in the BMW Championship at Caves Valley Golf Club in Maryland?

“If he putts the way he putted last week for the rest of his career, we have no chance,” Rory McIlroy said with a laugh.

Then again, McIlroy may have been serious.

Cantlay set a PGA Tour record (since data collecting began in 2004) with a mark of 14.57 strokes gained putting as he rolled in 537 feet worth of putts in regulation to finish at 27 under with Bryson DeChambeau.

Then Cantlay capped his epic six-hole playoff victory by burying one final 17-footer for birdie. That dagger to DeChambeau’s heart followed must-makes from 9 feet on the 16th for par, 8 feet on the 17th for par and a 21-footer for birdie on the 18th in regulation.

“He’s like a silent killer,” said Collin Morikawa, who played the first two rounds with the mellow, unhurried Cantlay last week. “He was making everything, he was hitting it well, driving it well off the tee and it’s hard to catch.”

Tour Championship: Tee times and TV info

The 29 others in the field at the Tour Championship beginning Thursday at East Lake Golf Club will have to run down Cantlay. By winning his fifth career PGA Tour title last week, he is armed with a 2-shot lead heading into the first round of the FedEx Cup Playoffs finale, where $15 million awaits the winner.

He’ll start at 10 under due to the staggered scoring format, with Tony Finau at 8 under, Bryson DeChambeau at 7 under, Cameron Smith at 5 under and the other 25 players starting at 4 under down to even par.

“It’s different than almost any other golf tournament you could possibly play in,” Cantlay said Wednesday at East Lake. “I don’t know another format even remotely close to this. So I’m going to do my best to throw that out the window and try and treat it like any other golf tournament because at the end of the day the best chance for me succeeding is shooting the lowest score possible.”

What was different last week was Cantlay being called “Patty Ice,” likely referring to his measured pace and the ice in his veins that is one of the highlights of his demeanor. Cantlay had never been called “Patty Ice” before last week.

“I’ve had people tell me that it’s hard to come up with a nickname for me. This is the first one that seems to have stuck a little bit,” Cantlay said. “Before this, the only thing I’d ever get is “PC.” I like it. I think it’s great. I think it’s cool when people are getting to know me a little bit and that maybe this moniker maybe has some traction because it maybe rings true.”

Cantlay said he doesn’t have to tinker with anything this week but needs to concentrate on getting enough rest after playing 78 holes last week, nearly every one of them while in contention. And he needs to get a better handle on East Lake – in three starts here he’s never finished better than a tie for 20th.

But he’s learned a few things that will help.

“I think controlling your golf ball and staying below the hole and hitting a bunch of fairways is a recipe for success around this golf course,” he said.

And in times of trouble, he can call upon the good memories of last week.

“If I could bottle up how I felt with the putter, that would be very, very good for me,” Cantlay said about his most vivid memory. “And I think the more times you can put yourself in a pressure situation and then you’re able to come through, I think the more you’re going to feel like you’re going to be able to reproduce that.

“So getting on the right side of that and getting some momentum for that feeling and feeling like when the chips are down, you’re going to come through, I think that’s invaluable in golf. So that feeling that I get and that confidence that I had in being able to come through in that moment, I would like to carry that with me and really draw on that when I find myself in a similar scenario.”

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How is Collin Morikawa’s back after falling from 1st to 11th in the FedEx Cup Playoffs? Well, he can touch his toes.

Morikawa was the leading points-earner during the PGA Tour’s first 47 events of the 50-event “super season,” but has now tumbled to 11th.

In just two weeks, Collin Morikawa went from the penthouse to the outhouse – albeit a pretty fancy one where he still has a shot at FedEx Cup riches.

Morikawa won the regular season title as the leading points-earner during the PGA Tour’s first 47 events of the 50-event “super season.” But he missed the cut at the Northern Trust and finished T-63 (out of 69) in the no-cut BMW Championship and with points quadrupled in the first two legs of the three-event FedEx Cup playoffs, Morikawa has tumbled to 11th. Because of the staggered scoring format used at the Tour Championship, instead of holding a two-stroke lead as the polesetter, a spot now held by Patrick Cantlay, he’s seven strokes back.

“I think I laid out the blueprint for what this format is,” Morikawa said. “If you start, or finish the regular season at first and you pretty much don’t accumulate any points, how far you might possibly drop down to 11th. It is what it is. I’ve heard other players talk about how they like it, how they don’t like it. I think it’s awesome to know that everyone has a chance this week.”

Tour Championship: Tee times and TV info

Quite a precipitous fall, but not one that dampened Morikawa’s enthusiasm for taking home the silver trophy and $15 million bonus prize on Sunday.

“It’s not going to scare me from anything,” he said. “I’m coming out here hopefully starting Thursday and we’re going to start playing well and put everything together.”

Morikawa’s goal all along was to peak this week. His regular-season performance, which included victories at the WGC Workday Championship and British Open, meant he was always going to make it to East Lake.

“How do I peak at this week, not peak at the first week because you could play well the first two weeks and have a bad week here and then you lose everything,” he said, adding, “Does it suck to be 11th? Absolutely.”

But Morikawa has come from behind to win from deficits before. In fact, he roared back to win from six behind at the midway point of the 2020 PGA Championship.

There’s also good reason why Morikawa finds himself with his back against the door to play well this week – he injured his back.

“It happened first round of the Olympics and then something else kind of happened in between Memphis and Liberty National, so during that week off,” he explained of a pulled muscle in his left lower back. “It was all gone by the time I teed off at Liberty (Northern Trust). There’s no excuses there for a bad back, so everyone can put that aside. My back is fine now… I can touch my toes now. I’m all good.”

The mistake he made was playing at the WGC FedEx St. Jude Invitational the week after the Tokyo Olympics and trying to play around the injury. He developed some bad habits, or as he put it, “built bad patterns into my swing.” His longtime instructor Rick Sessinghaus flew in for a session last week and helped get him back on track.

“I was trying to teach myself last week at BMW how to swing like my old self. We’re working back there. I’m pretty much, I would call it 95 percent back to the original swing. There’s just a couple little kinks here and there that show up…There’s one thing that I need to figure out today, but for the most part all the bad patterns that I’ve worked in Memphis that I should have never played injured, really, have been pushed out. So that’s what’s good.”

And should he win the $15 million pot of gold at the end of the FedEx Cup rainbow, how would he spend it?

“Maybe go have a nice dinner,” he said.

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Rory McIlroy ready to dig himself out of a hole at Tour Championship, the FedEx Cup Playoffs finale

If McIlroy is to become the first to win the FedEx Cup three times, he has some work to do at East Lake.

ATLANTA – If Rory McIlroy is to become the first to win the FedEx Cup three times, he’ll have to climb out of a big hole at the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club.

Because of the staggered scoring format used for the playoffs finale, McIlroy will begin Thursday’s first round at 2 under and eight shots behind leader Patrick Cantlay. But McIlroy isn’t throwing up a white golf flag.

“East Lake isn’t the easiest golf course in the world, and it seems to be a course that separates the field somewhat,” McIlroy said Wednesday ahead of a practice round. “So the way I look at it, if I go out tomorrow and shoot 6 under, for example, which is the score I shot last year in the first round, get to 8 under par, and some of those top guys shoot even par or even 1 or 2 over, all of a sudden you’re right in it.

“I feel like you can make up a lot of ground quickly. You can also lose a lot of ground quickly as well, depending on how it goes. But I certainly don’t feel like I’m out of it. I don’t feel like I’m too far behind. Eight shots around this golf course doesn’t seem like that much, so I’m still pretty optimistic.”

Tour Championship: Tee times and TV info

And he has good memories to call upon. Under a different scoring format, McIlroy won his first FedEx Cup in 2016. In 2019, the first year the playoffs used the current staggered scoring format, McIlroy overcame a poor starting position to join Tiger Woods as the only players to win the season-long race twice.

“I started five back, and I ended up winning the tournament by three,” McIlroy said. “It’s not an insurmountable advantage like it has been in previous years where guys have turned up to the Tour Championship not having to do anything to win the FedExCup. There’s been a few iterations of it, and I think this is definitely the best format so far. There’s clarity for the players. There’s clarity for the fans.

“It’s the playoffs, and I think everyone that’s in the top 30 deserves to be here and then because of that everyone in the top 30 deserves to feel like they have a chance to win it all. I went into two playoff runs being No. 1 in 2012 and 2014 and didn’t win either of them. So I’ve been on both sides of the coin here.”

McIlroy would have been closer to the lead if not for Sungjae Im’s brilliant finish in the final round of last week’s BMW Championship at Caves Valley Golf Club in Owings Mills, Maryland.

“I saw Sungjae this morning at breakfast, and when I finished on Sunday, it looked like I was projected to start the tournament this week at 4 under and then Sungjae birdied 17, and then I was projected to start the week at 3 under, and then he birdied the last and I went down to 2 under.”

Still, McIlroy has a chance. And he has some good mojo on his side. He started play last week in 28th place in the standings, with only the top 30 earning spots at East Lake in the final tournament of the season. Knowing he had to play well, McIlroy played very well.

He shot rounds of 64-70-65-67 to finish fourth, five shots behind eventual winner Patrick Cantlay and Bryson DeChambeau, both of whom finished regulation at 27 under before Cantlay won a six-hole playoff.

“I’m just happy to be here, to be honest,” said McIlroy, who won his 19th PGA Tour title earlier this year at the Wells Fargo Championship. “I knew I needed at least a decent week to make it here and it turned out to be a bit better than that. I probably played some of the best golf I’ve played all year.”

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Millions and millions more will be up for grabs on the PGA Tour this coming season

The lion’s share of the new money will begin in 2022.

ATLANTA – The PGA Tour’s pot of gold is about to get a lot bigger.

In March of 2020, the PGA Tour announced a new nine-year agreement with CBS Sports, NBC News and ESPN that would run from 2022 through 2030.

Well, the payout begins this fall.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in his annual gathering with the media ahead of the Tour Championship, the FedEx Cup Playoffs finale, that official prize money will increase by approximately $35 million and the FedExCup and Comcast Business Tour top-10 bonus pools combined will grow by $15 million to $85 million. The roughly $633 million in comprehensive earnings up for grabs this coming season marks an 18 percent increase year over year.

The 2021-22 season begins Sept. 16 with the Fortinet Championship at Silverado Resort and Spa in Napa, California. A few of the fall events will have purse increases but the lion’s share of the new money will begin in 2022.

When asked about the potential for a rogue league being established that could syphon away some of the game’s biggest stars, Monahan would only say his focus is on the PGA Tour and the alliance between the Tour and the European Tour.

“I’m 100 percent focused on our business and excited to be here at the Tour Championship to complete this unbelievable season, to go into 2021-2022 with not only an incredibly strong schedule with great committed tournaments, but to be fully sponsored coming through a pandemic,” he said.

“That’s what I have been focused on, that’s what I’ll continue to be focused on and I think in life you always have to be cognizant of, No. 1, there should be zero complacency to anything you do, and No. 2, someone is always going to try and take, compete and take something away from you. And I’ve operated that way every day of my life and I think that’s why, with the great team I have surrounded by me, we’re going to continue to grow this great Tour.”

The 2021-22 season will include for the first time three co-sanctioned events with the European Tour – the Barbasol Championship, Barracuda Championship and the Genesis Scottish Open will count in both the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup standings and the European Tour’s Race to Dubai.

“This is just the first step in a strategic alliance that we will continue to build on in the coming years,” Monahan said.

In other news

The 2021 WGC-HSBC Champions has been cancelled.

“Although it’s unfortunate to have to do so, we must ensure that we abide by the epidemic prevention policies of different markets which may cause inconvenience to the players and make tournament operations very challenging,” Monahan said.

The Bermuda Championship will be played as a stand-alone event with full FedExCup points and an increase in the purse size.

And the PGA Tour will continue to deal with COVID.

“We’re still not without our challenges and we’re still looking at those challenges day-to-day, market to market, and making the best decisions we can alongside community partners, health officials, and medical experts,” Monahan said. “We recognize that we were going to need to learn to live with this and we were going to need to continue to make adjustments as we went forward. I think that’s exactly what we did, and that’s exactly what we’ll continue to do as long as we’re forced to continue to deal with this pandemic.”

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PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan hopeful Bryson DeChambeau will end print media boycott

“I don’t think this is the way things are going to be for a long period of time,” said Monahan.

ATLANTA – Bryson DeChambeau hasn’t talked to the print media for nearly a month, opting only to speak with PGA Tour broadcast partners.

He wouldn’t even talk to print media after nearly shooting 59 in the second round of last week’s BMW Championship, which he eventually lost in a six-hole playoff to Patrick Cantlay.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan is hoping DeChambeau ends his boycott and right quick. In his annual address with the media at East Lake Golf Club ahead of this week’s Tour Championship, the FedEx Cup Playoffs finale, Monahan touched on the DeChambeau rift with the print media.

“Bryson is a star. He has fascinated golf and sport fans around the world since our return to golf. He’s also a young man that’s growing and evolving, not just on the golf course, but off the golf course,” Monahan said. “And I would just say to you that I look at this as a point in time. I don’t think this is the way things are going to be for a long period of time. I’m hopeful that we’ll get back to a steady cadence of communication that he’ll have with the media. But he’s working through some things and he’s going to have my and our support as he continues to do so.”

DeChambeau’s silence began in Memphis at the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational after his controversial comments concerning not taking the COVID-19 vaccine caused a storm. It just continued his turbulent summer in which he split with his longtime caddie, Tim Tucker; didn’t talk to the media at the Rocket Mortgage Classic despite being the defending champion and being sponsored by Rocket Mortgage; shot 44 on the back nine in the final round of the U.S. Open and fell from the lead to a tie for 26th; created a firestorm with his equipment company when he said his driver “sucks” at the British Open; was forced to withdraw from the Tokyo Summer Games after testing positive for COVID-19; and dealing with a feud with Brooks Koepka.

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“I’ve talked to Bryson about a lot of things and obviously our preference would be to have him talking to the media on a regular basis, and certainly in that instance when he has a historic performance,” Monahan said. “I’m hopeful that that will not be the case on a long-term basis, and I think that sometimes as hard as it is to contemplate and understand, I think human beings and individuals need some space, and I think that’s what’s going on right now.

“When we look at this over the long run, I think that this is something that he’ll get through. He’ll get to the other side of and he’ll be better for it. But that’s my perspective on it. It’s not binary, you know, he’s working through it in a way that he feels is best for him and he knows he has my and our support.”

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What would Jon Rahm do with $15 million FedEx Cup prize? Save it and invest responsibly, of course.

Rahm enters the week No. 4 in the FedEx Cup point standings and despite having to spot strokes to the top three is confident in his chances.

Jon Rahm knows exactly what he’d do with the $15 million first prize if he were to win the Tour Championship on Sunday and the FedEx Cup riches that go to the victor.

“Save it and invest it responsibly, unlike any other 27-year-old ever said,” Rahm, 27, laughed. “I said it before, we get this question every time. I’ve been very fortunate that at my young age I make more money than I ever thought I could make. I’ve never done this for the money, but obviously, it’s an amazing bonus and even already I can already afford a great life for my family and the future of my family.

“If I haven’t bought anything extravagant yet, like, yeah, we live in a very nice house and we have some nice cars, but nothing out of the very ordinary, I can’t really think of it, nothing that would like surprise anybody or raise any eyebrows, to be honest, nothing that’s that special.”

Spoken like a man who already has banked more than $7 million this season, tops on the PGA Tour, and will surpass $35 million in career earnings even if he finishes dead last at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta this week. Rahm, the World No. 1, is playing to win, to maintain the No. 1 rank – there is a scenario where if Dustin Johnson shoots the low 72-hole aggregate, he can regain the title – and to stake his claim to PGA Tour Player of the Year.

Rahm enters the week No. 4 in the FedEx Cup point standings. Despite a Tour-leading 14 top-10 finishes, including his U.S. Open win, Rahm will begin the tournament at -6, a stroke behind Bryson DeChambeau, two behind Tony Finau and four behind polesetter Patrick Cantlay, who won the BMW Championship on Sunday in a six-hole playoff. Rahm has overcome two positive COVID-19 tests this season to have a phenomenal season, so what’s spotting a few strokes to three players in the field?

“This is a ball striker’s golf course and my ball striking has been very, very good, and I’m only four shots back, so it’s only a one-shot difference each day, and we all know that four shots can be gone very, very quickly,” Rahm said. “If I get off to a fast start tomorrow, on Thursday, it will be a good start, get a couple birdies on, and we won’t be too far away. So I’m confident in what can be done. Obviously Patrick has to worry about his own game, but I feel like I’m doing the right things and I’m giving myself a really good chance.”

Rahm, who finished a career-best fourth at last year’s Tour Championship, already has made it clear during the Northern Trust two weeks ago that he’s not sold on the FedEx Cup playoff system. He didn’t back down on his belief but chose his words very carefully in doing so.

“I like it much better than the last one in the sense of that you know where you’re standing and you know what you have to do. I’m not going to say too much because I know my words are going to be possibly, let’s say, muddled to the extreme and almost make it sound about something different than what I feel, but I’m not the biggest supporter of the full format itself. What I do like is the fact that you understand what’s going on and what’s going to happen and who is on the lead and what you have to do to win, but I don’t agree with every part of the format this week.”

In other words, Rahm may not like the format but he isn’t going to complain too loudly. That same philosophy when he gets a bad break or doesn’t hit a good shot may help explain Rahm’s rise to U.S. Open champion and golf’s new alpha male, according to Tour veteran Stewart Cink.

“I think that we don’t see the complaining anymore on the golf course. Maybe it’s because we don’t see much to complain about on the golf course either,” Cink said. “But we don’t see Jon emotionally giving away energy by complaining about a result, a lip out, a bad bounce, or something like that, and I think that’s a huge sign of maturity. I don’t know if somebody got ahold of him or he just understood himself, but he just is on full go. I mean, he’s just, he’s rocketed, his potential was always there and he really never had a rough patch, but, man, he’s just all systems go at the moment.”

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