And it all comes down to this. The 2026 Tour Championship tees off on Thursday, Aug. 27, from East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Georgia. Golfweek staffers have locked in our best picks to win this weekend. Here's who we expect to sit atop the leaderboard when play ends on Sunday.
Follow along with all the action this week with Golfweek and USA TODAY Sports for a live leaderboard, golfer rankings and money list
.Tour Championship outright winner
Cameron Jourdan: Patrick Cantlay (+1600)
Cantlay is coming off his best finish of the season, a solo second at the BMW Championship. Now he heads to East Lake, where he won in 2021 and finished T-2 last season. He hasn't won in more than four years, but he has been trending recently and seems to constantly play his best golf in the playoffs. At a place he's plenty comfortable at,
expect a long winless drought to end.
Todd Kelly: Collin Morikawa (+1800)
/Morikawa made a too-little-too-late run last Sunday at the BMW, but that just shows that he's been lingering and could pounce any time. His last five starts — T17 (U.S. Open), 3 (Travelers), T18 (Open Championship), T52 (St. Jude), T4 (BMW) — stack up against pretty much anyone else during that stretch. He also won a signature event (AT&T Pebble Beach) earlier this year, so look for him to bag another big-game trophy this week in Atlanta.
Tim Schmitt: Scottie Scheffler (+300)
If this were a survivor pool, I'd say I've been saving Scottie all season for a big bang, but he just plays bigger in big moments, and this feels as big as they get for the last half of the season.
Jason Lusk: Rory McIlroy (+850)
After a slow couple of months since winning the Masters, McIlroy showed some spark at the BMW. He has shown three times before that he can win at East Lake.
Nicholas Stavas: Rory McIlroy (+850)
With his poor performance in Memphis, it appeared that McIlroy's hiatus following The Open might have put his game in a rough spot. Turns out, he just needed to shake the rust off, because he was excellent at Bellerive (aside from the 17th hole on Sunday). He's usually dynamite at East Lake, too. Since 2016, he has seven top-10 finishes and three wins at the Tour Championship. I think he adds a record fourth FedEx Cup to his trophy case this week.
David Dusek: Rory McIlroy (+850)
Two weeks ago I wrote that Sam Burns was going to win the Tour Championship, and he looked good at the FedEx St. Jude, but Rory McIlroy reminded me on Sunday why I love watching him play. If it weren't for a botched 17th hole at Bellerive, he might have won the BMW Championship. He's already won at East Lake three times, so I'm hopping off the Burns Bandwagon and going all in this week on Rory.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Golfweek experts share picks for the Tour Championship
Information in this article was imported automatically into a template written and reviewed by a USA TODAY Sports editor. You can send feedback using this form.
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