St. Jude Championship 2026

Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy are the two names carrying the most weight into TPC Southwind this week, in a tournament that decides who's still playing golf in three weeks. The FedEx St. Jude Championship, first leg of the 2026 FedEx Cup Playoffs, runs Thursday, August 13 through Sunday, August 16 in Memphis, Tennessee. A field of 70 by the FedEx Cup standings tees it up, with Daniel Berger (No. 60) not expected to play, there's no cut, and $20 million is on the table.

TPC Southwind plays to a par of 70 and 7,288 yards (6,664m), the Ron Prichard design that's opened the Playoffs every year since 2007. Only the top 50 finishers here advance to next week's BMW Championship, and this year's winner banks 750 FedEx Cup points, a fraction of the 2,000 that used to be on offer before the points overhaul I broke down Monday. The short version: Memphis now matters less as a coronation and more as the first hard cut in a three-week gauntlet, and for the players sitting closest to that 50th spot, this week is effectively a play-in game with their entire fall schedule on the line.

That's the structural story every year. What makes this one worth watching is who's actually chasing the money, and who's trying to answer a question about their own game before the calendar runs out.

The favorite with something to prove

Scheffler is the clear favorite in the market this week, priced at around +500, with McIlroy next at roughly 12-1 and Xander Schauffele and Tommy Fleetwood a tier back at about +2000. Behind Scheffler's number is a season that complicates the "best in the world" tag: one win, back in January's American Express, against seven podium finishes since, five runner-ups and two thirds, a stretch of near-misses that only Cameron Young and Ernie Els have matched since 2000, per CBS Sports, and one I'll admit reads as a more impressive streak to me than it apparently does to Scheffler himself. Memphis is where he starts trying to fix the "hasn't won since January" line, not add to a trophy case that's already full.

McIlroy's pedigree, on a short year

McIlroy is a three-time FedEx Cup champion with six playoff-event wins, the most recent of which clinched his third Cup at East Lake in 2022, per the St. Jude Championship's tournament page. That history is presumably why he's the second favorite despite sitting 12th in the current standings, well back of Scheffler's No. 1 seed. It's his first US start outside a major since June. His lone win this season came at the Masters in April, defending the green jacket a year after the 2025 title completed his career Grand Slam. A win this week would be his seventh in a playoff event. For a player who now owns six career majors, a 12th-place standing reads less like a slump and more like a reminder that the regular season and the Playoffs are scored on different clocks; this week's points reset determines who gets a real run at East Lake far more than anything that happened back in April.

Rose defends, and history says he won't repeat

Defending champion Justin Rose won last year's title in a three-hole playoff over J.J. Spaun, erasing a three-shot deficit as Tommy Fleetwood collapsed late in regulation. It's one of the sharper finishes the event has produced, and per the St. Jude Championship's own tournament page, the event hasn't had a repeat winner since it became a Playoffs stop in 2007. Rose, 46, already has a win this season at the Farmers Insurance Open, so he's not without form, even if the history is working against him.

The undercard stories are just as sharp. Jackson Koivun, 21 and the back-to-back Haskins Award winner as college golf's top player, matched Tiger Woods' record by qualifying for the Playoffs in just five professional starts. Michael Brennan punched his own first career playoff ticket by winning last week's Wyndham Championship. And the cut line for the BMW Championship is already tight: Maverick McNealy holds the 50th and final automatic spot, just 27 points ahead of Harris English in 51st, with Max Homa, Sungjae Im, and Jordan Spieth among the other names who need a specific finish here just to keep their season alive.

How to watch

ESPN, Golf Channel, and the PGA Tour's own coverage split the week's broadcast, with tee times for Thursday's opening round still to be released. The tournament runs through Sunday, and the field narrows twice more after this week: to the top 50 for the BMW Championship, then to the top 30 for the Tour Championship at East Lake. Whatever happens at TPC Southwind this week, it's the first real elimination round of the three, and with $20 million and a top playoff seed in play, nobody in the field is treating it like a warm-up.