Joe Champion
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The PGA Tour season reaches the business end this week with the first of 3 FedEx Cup playoff events, the FedEx St. Jude Championship, which takes place at TPC Southwind for the third consecutive season. TPC Southwind has staged a PGA Tour event since 1989 and, after the St Jude Invitational was removed from the schedule, this venue became the opening stop of the FedEx Cup playoffs in 2022, taking over as permanent home of the previously nomadic Northern Trust. The top 70 eligible players on the FedEx Cup list are set to tee it up this week before the field is cut to 50 for next week’s BMW Championship. The top 30 after the BMW will then head to East Lake to fight it out for the £25 million first prize at the Tour Championship.
After adding Olympic gold to his rapidly growing title collection, Scottie Scheffler once again tops the betting market and he’s hard to oppose again at a tough course where a top-class tee-to-green game tends to be essential. However, 6 previous visits to Southwind have yielded no better than 14th place so Scheffler is perhaps not quite at his most comfortable in Memphis.
FedEx St. Jude Championship golf picks and predictions
Patrick Cantlay (+2200)
Odds available at FanDuel Sportsbook and Bet365 at time of publishing.
With big bucks on the line, this tends to be the time of the season when Patrick Cantlay turns it on, as he demonstrated when just missing out in a playoff by Lucas Glover a year ago. Cantlay has won 3 of the last 9 FedEx Cup playoff events, finishing in the top 10 on 6 occasions, and he looks to be inching back to form, finishing 3rd at the US Open and 5th at the Travelers Championship before a respectable 25th-placed finish at the British Open.
Hideki Matsuyama (+3000)
Odds available at FanDuel Sportsbook at time of publishing.
Olympic bronze medallist Hideki Matsuyama was a runner-up in the last St. Jude Invitational at Southwind in 2021, then 16th on his return in the playoffs last season, and he has every chance of challenging for the title. After a strong June featuring top-10 finishes at the Memorial Tournament and the US Open, Matsuyama faltered in Scotland in July but he was back to form at the Olympics, producing one of his best iron performances of the year to clinch 3rd place.
Sam Burns (+5000)
Odds available at FanDuel Sportsbook at time of publishing.
Sam Burns adores the Bermudagrass greens of Southwind, where he was a runner-up in 2021 and, at 28th in the FedEx standings, he knows he is in need of a decent fortnight if he’s to make certain of a Tour Championship place.
Shane Lowry (+5500)
Odds available at FanDuel Sportsbook at time of publishing.
Shane Lowry was thwarted by one bad round at the British Open but he’s been striking the ball well for several months and his scrambling skills are a big positive around Southwind’s small green complexes.
