World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler is not a fan of the PGA Tour’s current format for the season-ending Tour Championship and FedEx Cup Playoffs. But big changes are in the works, and Scheffler is intimately involved with them.
At last year’s playoffs-opening FedEx St. Jude Championship, the two-time Masters winner took aim at the current playoff format.
“I talked about it the last few years, I think it’s silly. You can’t call it a season-long race and have it come down to one tournament,” Scheffler argued. “Hypothetically, we get to East Lake and my neck flares up and it doesn’t heal the way it did at the Players. I finish 30th in the FedEx Cup because I had to withdraw from the last tournament? Is that really the season-long race? No, it is what it is.”
The current playoff format consists of three events. At the final event, the Tour Championship, players are given starting scores based on their FedEx Cup ranking.
Scheffler entered last year’s Tour Championship No. 1 in the standings and, as a result, was given a starting score of 10 under. Scheffler had six wins on the season at that point. Xander Schauffele was in second place, so he received a starting score of eight under. But Schauffele only had two wins in 2024, which means all of Scheffler’s success only earned him a two-shot advantage in the final tournament that determined the season-long FedEx Cup champion.
For the record, Scheffler still won the Tour Championship comfortably to take home the $25 million grand prize. He also won an extra $8 million for finishing the regular season atop the FedEx Cup standings.
But that doesn’t seem to have shaken his negative opinion of the current format.
In his press conference at the 2025 Arnold Palmer Invitational on Wednesday, Scheffler revealed that he and his fellow Player Advisory Council (PAC) members are deliberating multiple new formats for the FedEx Cup Playoffs and Tour Championship.
“There’s a few different formats that I think we’re looking at right now. Some of ’em good, some of ’em were bad. I’m not really going to go into details of those formats because we’re still ironing them out,” Scheffler explained. “I think being a part of the PAC is an important position right now for the Tour, because we do have a lot of input on the direction of where we’re going with things. And with where the PGA Tour is right now I think we’re in a really good spot where we have good competition.”
While not revealing details about the potential changes being discussed, Scheffler did describe his ideal concept for the FedEx Cup, and starting scores are probably not included.
“I think when it comes to the FedEx Cup, I want to have some of the purest forms of competition and really crown a true winner. Is starting strokes the best format for that? Right now, I would say probably not.
“And so that’s kind of why I think we’re looking at different stuff. And the position where I am on the PAC, we have a lot of great guys on it this year that are all at different levels of the Tour, whether it be guys that are just now getting their card or guys that have been around for a while, and then you have some great players and some players who are trying to work towards greatness. I think we got a good balance and good perspectives and feel like we’re working in the right direction for sure.”
Rory McIlroy’s Tour Championship idea
Scheffler wasn’t the only PGA Tour star who talked about changes to the FedEx Cup Playoffs on Wednesday. World No. 2 Rory McIlroy took his own swing when asked about it.
The idea McIlroy proposed was a match play format for the Tour Championship, but he qualified that opinion by admitting that it might not be the right tournament for it given that the FedEx Cup chase is based on stroke play.
“I’ve won it both iterations. Look, I think the thing is — look, everyone sort of talks about the match play format, and like we don’t have a match play tournament. So would East Lake lend itself to match play and would that be exciting?” McIlroy asked. “And it might be, but I think one of the comments has been, you know, we play stroke play the whole way throughout the season, and then to decide the FedExCup champion, we play match play? It’s like, I don’t, I don’t know if that’s the best way to determine the season-long champion. It could be. Like, like I like the format, I like the idea.”
But whatever format the Tour and its player representatives land on for the 2025 Tour Championship and FedEx Cup, McIlroy believes it needs to be simple and easy for fans to understand.
“I mean, it has to be close to being right, but it has to be simple. I think it has to be simple. I think, if anything, like we’ve sort of overcomplicated the whole thing in a way, and I think we just need to simplify it,” McIlroy said.
