The 32nd Tour Championship begins Thursday at East Lake GC. Here’s a key statistical look at the 30 players in the field.
| FedExCup Rank | Player | Previous appearances | Skinny |
| 1 | Bryson DeChambeau | 0 | DeChambeau has made 66 birdies during his remarkable run through the PGA Tour playoffs; five more than anyone else. Has also led the field in at least one prominent stat category each week. He led The Northern Trust in greens in regulation, the Dell Technologies Championship in sand saves, and the BMW Championship in fairways hit. |
| 2 | Justin Rose | 8 | Newly anointed as the No. 1 player in the world, Rose is looking to become the second top-ranked player to win the Tour Championship. Tiger Woods was No. 1 when he won in 1999 and 2007. Rose has been a machine on the greens this season, leading the Tour in putts made from 4-8 feet at 78.98 percent. |
| 3 | Tony Finau | 1 | Finau’s at his best in the biggest tournaments. He is the only player to finish in the top 10 in all three previous playoffs events. He also finished in the top 10 in three of the four majors as well as the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational. |
| 4 | Dustin Johnson | 8 | Johnson, who leads the PGA Tour in scoring average and birdies per round, is the Tour’s leading scorer on par 3s, par 4s, and par 5s; though, he’s tied for first on the shorter and longer holes. If he finishes the year as the leading scoring at all three distances, he’ll join Woods (2000 and 2009) as the only players to complete that trifecta. |
| 5 | Justin Thomas | 2 | Thomas enters the Tour Championship having shot under par in 19 of his last 20 PGA Tour rounds. He has had at least two subpar rounds in 18 of the 20 individual stroke-play events he has played on Tour this season. |
| 6 | Keegan Bradley | 3 | One way to win a Tour event is to improve dramatically for a week in a stat in which you have been struggling. At the BMW, Bradley led the field in strokes gained: putting after entering the week ranked 186th on Tour in that category. He’s still 174th in SG: putting entering the Tour Championship; only Francesco Molinari ranks worse among players who qualified for East Lake. |
| 7 | Brooks Koepka | 2 | Like Thomas, Koepka has been shooting lights out since mid-summer. In his last five starts, Koepka has 18 subpar rounds and matches Thomas’ scoring average of 67.50 since the WGC-Bridgestone. |
| 8 | Bubba Watson | 7 | Watson bounced back after finishing 75th in the 2017 FedExCup standings by improving his greens hit in regulation from 63.02 percent to 69.63 percent; climbing from 158th on Tour to 32nd. That has helped his birdie average rank climb from 106th to 50th (3.80 birdies per round) and his scoring average rank improve from 127th to 35th (70.25). |
| 9 | Billy Horschel | 2 | Horschel, who is making his first appearance in the Tour Championship since he won at East Lake in 2014, is one of two players in the season finale who only qualified for two majors in 2018. Horschel played in the Masters and the PGA Championship. Aaron Wise is the other player, having only appeared in the U.S. Open and the PGA Championship. |
| 10 | Cameron Smith | 0 | After finishing the regular season ranked 182nd on Tour in GIR (62.50 percent), Smith ranked in the top 20 in that stat in both the Northern Trust and the Dell (before finishing last in the field at Aronimink). And though he now ranks T-161 on Tour in GIR, his percentage of 63.8 remains the worst of the 30 players to qualify for East Lake. |
| 11 | Webb Simpson | 5 | Simpson is fifth on Tour in scoring average at 69.311 despite being T-116 on Tour in birdies per round (3.57). He’s the only player currently in the top 10 on Tour in scoring average who ranks outside the top 100 in birdies per round. |
| 12 | Jason Day | 7 | Day, who set the PGA Tour record for strokes gained: putting in a season two years ago (1.130 strokes gained per round) is leading the Tour again in 2018, with an average of .800 strokes gained per round. |
| 13 | Francesco Molinari | 0 | At 35, Molinari is the oldest player to be making his Tour Championship debut in 2018. The only other first-timers in the field are DeChambeau, Smith, Tommy Fleetwood, Wise at Patton Kizzire. |
| 14 | Phil Mickelson | 18 | Despite being terrible off the tee this season, Lefty has had a bounce-back season in 2018, returning to the Tour Championship after missing it a year ago. He ranks 144th on Tour in strokes gained: off the tee, and his driving accuracy percentage is a career-worst 51.94 percent (ranked 192nd of 194 players). |
| 15 | Patrick Reed | 4 | Reed, who finished first in the Masters and fourth in the U.S. Open, is looking to become the first player to finish in the top five in those majors plus the Tour Championship in the same year since Jordan Speith won all three events in 2015. Reed’s pedigree in Georgia gives him a good chance, although he has never finished better than T-13 at East Lake. |
| 16 | Patrick Cantlay | 1 | Cantlay has played remarkably since returning from a back injury in 2017. In the last two seasons he has made the cut in 33 of his 35 PGA Tour starts, making 20 cuts in 22 starts this season. His two missed cuts over two years are the fewest of any player in the Tour Championship. |
| 17 | Rory McIlroy | 4 | McIlroy’s 2018 driving distance of 320.0 yards is currently the second-best single-season mark in PGA Tour history, trailing only Hank Kuehne’s 321.4-yard average in 2003. Rory needs to average 347 yards per measured drive at East Lake to break Kuehne’s single-season record. |
| 18 | Xander Schauffele | 1 | No player has won consecutive Tour Championships, but just getting back to East Lake makes it a successful season for the defending champion. In the playoffs era, only three other winners have qualified the following year (Mickelson in 2009-10, Brandt Snedeker in 2012-13, and Spieth in 2015-16). |
| 19 | Tommy Fleetwood | 0 | The Englishman is the only player in the Tour Championship field who has yet to win a tournament of any kind on the PGA Tour. Still, Fleetwood knows how to lift a trophy. He has four wins on the European Tour, including the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in January. |
| 20 | Tiger Woods | 14 | Woods hasn’t missed a measured putt from 3 feet or less during his comeback season. However, he has struggled from slightly longer distances, ranking T-123 on Tour in putts from 3-to-5 feet, making just 189 of his 217 attempts. |
| 21 | Aaron Wise | 0 | If a PGA Tour rookie wins the Tour Championship for the second straight year, it’s going to have to be Wise who does it. The 22-year-old is the only rookie to qualify in 2018. Fleetwood is in his first year on the PGA Tour but is not considered a rookie. |
| 22 | Kevin Na | 5 | Na did not reach the Tour Championship in 2017, thanks in large part to taking one putt on just 38 percent of his holes (a career low). He has improved to 43.50 percent in 2018 (second on Tour), thanks in part to improving his percentage in putting from 4-to-8 feet from 64 to 71. |
| 23 | Rickie Fowler | 4 | For Fowler, it’s about where he hits his tee ball when he misses the fairway. When hitting out of the right rough, Fowler’s proximity to the hole is 52 feet, 10 inches, tied for the worst mark on Tour. When hitting out of the left rough, his approach average is 35 feet, four inches, second best on Tour. |
| 24 | Jon Rahm | 1 | The long-hitting Spaniard is fifth on the PGA Tour in strokes gained: off the tee in 2018 after finishing second in that category in 2017. |
| 25 | Kyle Stanley | 1 | Stanley’s greens in regulation percentage is a career-best 71.68, and although he doesn’t have a top-10 finish in the playoffs, he has been more accurate with his approach shots, hitting greens at a 76.4 percent clip over the last three events. |
| 26 | Paul Casey | 4 | Casey has qualified for the Tour Championship four times in his career and has never finished worse than T-5. He has a scoring average at East Lake of 68.31. |
| 27 | Hideki Matsuyama | 4 | Matsuyama’s getting hot at the right time. He has scored in the 60s in 17 of his last 20 rounds, including 10 of 12 in the playoffs. It has moved him from 64th to 25th in scoring average and from 87th to 27th in the FedExCup standings. |
| 28 | Gary Woodland | 5 | Woodland is the only player in the field to rank in the top 10 on Tour in driving distance (313 yards, T-8) and greens hit in regulation (71.42 percent, T-6). However, Woodland is 191st on Tour in one-putt percentage, converting his first putt on a hole just one-third of the time (33.27 percent). |
| 29 | Marc Leishman | 2 | Remarkably consistent, if Leishman finishes in the top 10 at East Lake he will have the same number of starts, cuts made, rounds played and top-10 finishes in 2017 and 2018. The big difference: He won twice last season, compared with two runner-up finishes this year. |
| 30 | Patton Kizzire | 0 | Kizzire’s victory at the Sony Open in January (his second win of the 2017-18 season) is also his last top-10 finish of the season. He has now gone 21 starts without a top-10 finish. In fact, he hasn’t finished in the top 25 in his last 17 starts. |
Source: Internet
