2026 Tour Championship: East Lake DFS Plays and Tournament Preview

So we’ve made it to the final event of the season, and this will be the second year that the new look East Lake will not feature starting strokes– thus, the 30th ranked player in the field is starting at zero, just like Scottie Scheffler. While I think that the no starting strokes makes this a better golf tournament, I don’t think that the current playoff format makes the first and second rounds matter close to enough. Now that the FedEx St. Jude’s and BMW Championship feature barely any more points than a regular season event, the regular season probably matters too much and there’s barely any drama. There are a number of players that have had an extremely mediocre two weeks (borderline not even shown up for these events) and are still in the exact same position that they were a few weeks ago to win the Tour Championship, which certainly feels like an overcorrection to the previous format, but here we are. I’m not sure there is a perfect solution to make these golf playoffs feel bigger, and everything that has been tried hasn’t worked out. I think the first step would be creating some variety in venue selection that actually represented the golf that was played in the regular season, as opposed to choosing three Southeastern Bermuda golf courses to finish the season. As you may notice, a lot of what I’m going to say about East Lake could also be said at Bellerive. I think these two courses are very similar in a lot of ways, even after the Andrew Green renovation.