ATLANTA — Without his built-in, starting-strokes advantage, Scottie Scheffler will have his work cut out for him this weekend at the Tour Championship — but he’s been here before.
Scheffler, who entered the finale leading the post-season points race (before the reset), birdied the 18th hole Friday for a 1-under 69 to keep his streak of 19 consecutive sub-par rounds alive. He’s five shots behind co-leaders Tommy Fleetwood and Russell Henley, which is one shot worse than he was after 36 holes last week at the BMW Championship. He won that event by two strokes.
“I think if I continue to strike it the way I did today, it’s just one of those days where it seemed like I wasn’t getting rewarded for the stuff that I was doing; just a touch off all day,” Scheffler said. “My game definitely doesn’t feel off, but you look at 18, end up a foot off the fairway.”
The PGA Tour changed the format for this year’s Tour Championship to 72 holes of stroke play with all 30 players starting at even par instead of the starting-strokes format which began in 2019 and gave the post-season points leaders shots to start the week.
Last year at East Lake, Scheffler began the week at 10 under and beat Collin Morikawa, who had the week’s lowest total without starting strokes.
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