He’s won six times on the PGA Tour, claimed a green jacket in Augusta and a gold medal in Paris, and is the odds favorite to cap his phenomenal 2024 season at the Tour Championship this week. But is Scottie Scheffler really the best bet to win the season finale at the venerable East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta?

Oh, sure, the season-long numbers are unquestionably difficult to ignore. But the first two rounds of the FedEx Cup Playoffs have not been kind to the world No. 1—he was never really a factor on the weekend in the opener at Memphis despite finishing solo fourth, and then he cratered to a 1-over, T33 result in last week’s event outside Denver. The finish at Castle Pines was his second-worst of the season, behind his 8-over T41 at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst No. 2, a far more difficult golf course than what he played last week.

Now it’s on to Atlanta, where the top 30 in the FedEx Cup Playoff standings vie for a $25 million first-place prize. Under the Tour Championship’s staggered start format, Scheffler will open the tournament Thursday at 10-under, two strokes ahead of his closest pursuer, Xander Schauffele. Scheffler is tough to unseat when he’s at the top of the leaderboard, and he’ll begin there at East Lake—unlike the past two weeks.

PGA Tour Championship Odds

Odds as of August 27

PGA Tour Championship Best Bets

If Scottie Scheffler isn't the best bet to win this year's PGA Tour Championship, who is?

Xander Schauffele To Win (+230)

While it may pale in comparison to Scheffler’s remarkable season, Schauffele has been amazingly steady since late May, with two major championships and eight top-10s in 10 starts over that span. And he’s been exceptional in the FedEx Cup Playoffs, with a T2 at Memphis and a T5 at Castle Pines. Schauffele starts two shots behind Scheffler on Thursday, but he’s excellent at East Lake and is one of the very few players in Atlanta with reasonable hopes of overtaking the world No. 1.

Scottie Scheffler Each-Way (-120)

The last time Scheffler had a bad tournament finish—honestly, the only other time this season—he regrouped from his U.S. Open disappointment to win the Travelers Championship the following week. This is still the guy who’s won six PGA Tour events and Olympic gold, no doubt, but he also hasn’t played much in the past two months. Then there’s this: Scheffler has also been the top seed at East Lake for the past two years, yet failed to close the deal. We’re hedging with an each-way wager that covers both a win and a top-five finish.

Wyndham Clark Top 5 (+360)

While Clark played well early in 2024 with a win at Pebble Beach and runner-up at the Arnold Palmer, we haven’t heard much recently from the 2023 U.S. Open champion. Since late June, though, he’s quietly been lurking near the top of the leaderboard more often, which has culminated in his finishes in the first two rounds of the FedEx Cup Playoffs: T7 and T13, the latter dampened somewhat by a closing 74 after he started the final round in the top five. Regardless, the game has clearly been there the past two weeks for Clark, who finished third in the Tour Championship last year and starts this time tied for sixth at 4-under—well within striking distance of a top-five in the 30-player field.

PGA Tour Championship Betting Tips

While it seems like a decided advantage to open the Tour Championship with the lead in the event’s staggered start format, it doesn’t often turn out that way. The last top seed to win at East Lake was Jordan Spieth way back in 2015, and Scheffler has been particularly snakebitten in Atlanta the past two seasons—he shot three rounds in the 70s to open the door for Viktor Hovland in 2023, and fired a final-round 73 to finish well back of winner Rory McIlroy in 2022.

Scheffler started two strokes ahead of Hovland last season, and six strokes ahead of McIlroy in 2022, so recent history certainly suggests that someone can surge from the middle of the pack to win. Schauffele’s record at East Lake is ridiculous: his average finish of 3.3 is the best among all players with more than one career start in the Tour Championship, and he’s never finished worse than T7 in seven career appearances. Of his past 19 rounds in Atlanta, 18 have been in the 60s, and his career stroke average at East Lake is 66.96.

If not Schauffele, then who else might be capable of knocking Scheffler out of the top spot? Rory McIlroy has a career average finish of 6.4 in the Tour Championship, which includes finishes of fourth and first the past two years, but he’s also coming off a T11 and T68 in his first two playoff events. Sam Burns has been fantastic the past two weeks with a T5 at Memphis and a T2 at Castle Pines, but in three previous appearances at East Lake, his average finish has been 17th.

Patrick Cantlay has been on the fringes of contention the past two weeks and has been T7 or better in his last three Tour Championship appearances, which includes a victory in 2021. Then there’s Hovland, bidding to become the first back-to-back winner of the event—though he’s starting eight strokes behind the leader, and the Norwegian and his rebuilt golf swing have been hot-and-cold with a T2 and a T26 the past two weeks.