Jon Rahm, Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy have separated themselves as the PGA Tour's "Big Three" this season, with eight tournament victories among them.
Rahm is No 1 in the FedEx Cup points standings. Scheffler is playing as consistently as anyone since Tiger Woods. But McIlroy is so far the only one of this Big Three who's won a FedEx Cup – three of them, to be precise.
With the 2022-23 regular season in the books, the FedEx Cup playoffs will begin on Thursday at the FedEx St Jude Championship at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee.
Just 70 players qualified for the first leg of the three-week playoffs, down from 125 in prior years. The top 50 in the points standings after the St Jude will qualify not only for next week's BMW Championship, but also the tour's new signature events in 2024.
Max Homa and Wyndham Clark round out the top five in the points standings, but the playoffs might be a three-horse race.
Rahm hasn't won since slipping on his first green jacket in April at the Masters, but he tied for second at The Open Championship his last time out. He came closest to winning the FedEx Cup in 2021, when he finished runner-up to Patrick Cantlay.
"Obviously you want to win every time we tee it up, but yeah, the goal is to try to get to East Lake as No 1 and enjoy that two-shot lead," Rahm said of the playoff format. "It's always made a difference. It made a difference when I finished second place."
STAKES GROWING HIGHER
Scheffler has a whopping 15 top-10 finishes this season. One more would tie Woods (1999), Payne Stewart (1986) and Tom Watson (1980) for the fourth-most in a season since 1980. Woods also had 17 top-10s in 2000, very much in Scheffler's reach.
Scheffler's season average of 2.807 strokes gained: tee to green is also historically good, topped only by Woods and McIlroy since 2004. His problem has been the flat stick, and he was seen at TPC Southwind testing a new putter.
"It feels like at times this year I've hit a lot of good putts that have gone right up to the edge and not gone in," Scheffler said. "... If your alignment is a half inch off, the ball lips out instead of going in the middle or lips out instead of lips in. The margins in this game are so close, so it's something that I feel really comfortable with where the balance point is on this putter, and I'm excited to try it out this week."
McIlroy, too, brought an extra putter to Memphis with the stakes growing higher each week.
"I just wanted a different look, just wanted to freshen it up," McIlroy said. "I've got my Spider with me this week if that putter isn't doing what I want it to do over the first couple days. I may go back."
McIlroy, who won the FedEx Cup in 2016, 2019 and 2022, said he treats the playoffs like a 12-round tournament.
"I missed the cut here last year and then was able to bounce back with a good finish at the BMW and then go on and win the Tour Championship," he said. "If you're up there in the standings, at least you know you've got a little bit of wiggle room."
With the reduced field size, there will be no 36-hole cut at the St Jude going forward.
The defending champion, Will Zalatoris, is not on hand as he continues to recover from back surgery.
The par-70, 7 243-yard layout has yielded some low scores in recent years, including a 19-under-par winning score by Dustin Johnson in 2018.