The 2022 PGA Tour season will wrap up this week with the Tour Championship, and that means there’s just one more opportunity to nail a First-Round Leader bet on the way out.
But before we get to this week’s FRL card, we should go over the format for the 2022 Tour Championship, as it will impact the strategy for betting FRLs this week.
The first round begins on Thursday, Aug. 25 on Golf Channel.
2022 Tour Championship format
Starting in 2019, the Tour completely overhauled the Tour Championship to guarantee that the winner of the event was also crowned the FedEx Cup Championship (unlike in 2018 when Tiger Woods won the tournament, but Justin Rose hoisted the FedEx Cup).
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To ensure there would only be one champion, the Tour introduced a 30-player field with staggered scoring, or as they call it, “bonus strokes.” The player (in this case, Scottie Scheffler) who enters East Lake atop the FedEx Cup standings gets a two-stroke edge over the second-place player, all the way down to a 10-stroke edge over the guys toward the bottom.
Here’s how each golfer will start the week at East Lake:
| Golfer | Starting Score |
|---|---|
| Scottie Scheffler | 10-under |
| Patrick Cantlay | 8-under |
| Xander Schauffele | 6-under |
| Sam Burns | 5-under |
| Cameron Smith Rory McIlroy Tony Finau Sepp Straka Sungjae Im |
4-under |
| Jon Rahm Scott Stallings Justin Thomas Cameron Young Matt Fitzpatrick |
3-under |
| Max Homa Hideki Matsuyama Jordan Spieth Joaquin Niemann Viktor Hovland |
2-under |
| Collin Morikawa Billy Horschel Tom Hoge Corey Conners Brian Harman |
1-under |
| K.H. Lee J.T. Poston Sahith Theegala Adam Scott Aaron Wise |
Even par |
First-Round Leader odds, picks, and predictions
Since he’s starting with a two-stroke head-start, Scottie Scheffler (-140) is the odds-on favorite to be the first-round leader at East Lake. Patrick Cantlay, who will start the tournament in second place, is +220, and then the odds jump to the double-digits starting with Xander Schauffele at +1000.
Betting FRLs is already a tricky endeavor, but this tournament’s format throws even more chaos into the fray. In reality, it’s likely that either Scheffler or Cantlay will end the day atop the leaderboard, but if you’re not backing one of them, you may as well have a punt on a longshot. Why? Because if you’re not betting on one of the favorites, it means you’re betting that they both will struggle and could fall toward the pack. If that does happen, it brings a lot of golfers into play.
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Sungjae Im (+8000, FanDuel)
Starting the event six strokes back, it will take quite an effort for Sungjae Im to get off the course on Thursday with the lead. But as explained above, this is just as much a bet that Scheffler and Cantlay will stumble as it is a punt on Im to get scorching hot. Rory McIlroy (+2900), Cam Smith (+3300), and Tony Finau (+5000) are all starting the event with the same score as Im, yet they’re being offered at much shorter odds than the South Korean. And it’s not like Im is in iffy form, either.
Scott Stallings (+21000, FanDuel)
If you’re dipping this far down the leaderboard, you are truly hoping that things fly off the handle on Thursday and if that does happen, perhaps Scott Stallings can take advantage. The most surprising name in the field, Stallings is playing with house money after finishing T2 at the BMW Championship. Stallings shot 68-68-66-69 in Delaware last week and has finished T13 or better in five of his last six tournaments.
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