Rain and lightning, but not wind so much, pose a weather threat to the Tour Championship field when Round 1 tees off Thursday at East Lake Golf Club.
Forecasters agree the danger window lands squarely in the afternoon, when marquee groups will likely still be chasing shots, raising the chances of a lightning delay before anyone finishes 18 holes.
The FedEx Cup postseason finale, worth $10 million to the winner and a five-year PGA Tour exemption, according to the PGA Tour’s breakdown of the new format, opens with Thursday’s 11 a.m. tee times, according to Golf Digest‘s guide.
Round 1 Storm Watch at East Lake
Thursday is the round most likely to get interrupted. Women’s Golf Journal‘s AccuWeather-based forecast puts the afternoon’s rain chances near 90 percent, with close to half an inch possible. National Weather Service hourly data tracked by MySportsWeather shows the same afternoon spike, with numbers climbing toward about 60 percent by mid-afternoon as temperatures push past 90 degrees.
Meteorologist Kevin Roth, who builds course-specific outlooks for tour events, isn’t predicting a washout. It will be a daily question of “will they dodge the storms or will a downpour cause a delay,” according to Roth’s tournament weather outlook. Those pop-up cells, he added, often can’t be pinpointed until roughly an hour before they arrive.
The National Weather Service’s Atlanta-area forecast puts Thursday’s storm chance at 60 percent, then scales down across the week: 50 percent Friday, 40 percent Saturday and just 20 percent Sunday. Friday carries the second-highest risk, with afternoon rain odds again pushing past 50 percent in both the AccuWeather and NWS-based models, though morning tee times should stay dry.
Saturday and Sunday look calmer. Rainfall totals drop to a trace, and Sunday emerges as the cleanest day on the schedule, with storm chances holding near about 20 percent on the National Weather Service forecast and arriving late, if at all. A full-day postponement looks unlikely across any round, but the pop-up nature of these storms means the PGA Tour will keep an on-site meteorologist on hand Thursday. Wind stays minor all week, generally 5 mph or less, with East Lake playing softer and longer whenever rain does arrive.
Scottie Scheffler Leads FedEx Cup Field
Every player starts the Tour Championship at even par, so the postseason points list is now irrelevant. Lowest 72-hole score wins both the tournament and the $10 million FedEx Cup bonus.
Scottie Scheffler enters as the heavy favorite, with sportsbooks pricing him near 3-1 odds, according to USA Today’s tournament power rankings. Scheffler has said he’s roughly 95 percent recovered from a bout of hand, foot and mouth disease, with a couple of throat sores lingering, according to The Independent.
Rory McIlroy sits well behind Scheffler in the betting market, with Xander Schauffele, Patrick Cantlay and Cameron Young rounding out the next tier of contenders, according to Covers.com’s FedEx Cup odds page. Matt Fitzpatrick, Wyndham Clark, Si Woo Kim and defending champion Tommy Fleetwood follow in the standings, according to a Bleacher Report points standings recap.
No player in the 30-player field starts with a scoring cushion. Whoever manages the heat, humidity and softened greens best over four rounds walks away with the Cup, regardless of where the points list had him ranked after the BMW Championship.
Will Tour Championship Be Delayed Thursday? Weather Forecast for East Lake