ATLANTA — Scottie Scheffler started the Tour Championship with a two-shot lead based on his dominant season.
And then he looked dominant as ever Thursday, posting the best round at 6-under-par 65 to build a seven-shot lead and take a huge step toward the FedEx Cup title to close out the PGA Tour’s 2024 season.
Scheffler had five birdies over his last seven holes on a sweltering afternoon at renovated East Lake Golf Club to pull away from second-seeded Xander Schauffele and everyone else.
He made a birdie from the bunker on the par-5 18th hole with an eight-foot putt and took his spot in the PGA Tour record book with an asterisk. No one has ever led by seven after 18 holes as far back as the tour keeps such records. The asterisk is because he was only one shot better on the course than five players who each had a 66.
This is the sixth year of the “starting strokes” format at the FedEx Cup finale. Scheffler was the No. 1 seed based on his six PGA Tour victories, which includes the Masters and The Players Championship. He started the tournament at 10 under and with a two-shot lead over Schauffele, a two-time major winner this year with triumphs at the PGA Championship and the British Open.
This is the third straight year Scheffler has started with the lead at East Lake, but he has yet to win the FedEx Cup and its $25 million bonus. And by the sound of it, that wasn’t on his mind during the opening round.
“I wasn’t thinking about the lead out there today. There’s no reason to. It’s the first day of the tournament. It’s 72 holes. It’s a long time out there to be playing with a lead,” Scheffler said. “I was just focused on staying in my own world and continuing to just try to execute.”
He got a quick reminder that a two-shot lead on Thursday — or even on a Sunday — is nothing to celebrate. Schauffele made up that deficit on the opening hole with an eight-foot birdie, while Scheffler made his lone bogey by having to play short of the green from behind a tree.
Scheffler, on the strength of a 35-foot birdie putt at No. 7, led by one when they made the turn and then left his fellow Olympic men’s golf gold medalist — he won this summer in Paris, Schauffele won three years ago in Tokyo — in the dust.
Schauffele missed an eight-foot birdie chance at No. 10 and a five-foot par putt on No. 11. Scheffler made birdies on the next three holes as Schauffele couldn’t find a fairway, which led to him not having any reasonable chances to gain strokes.
“I think I scored OK actually for how bad I hit it,” said Schauffele, who headed for the practice range when his round was over. “Overall it was kind of a ‘meh’ day. Wasn’t something I was proud of or disgusted by.”
The difference between golf’s best two players this year was clear: Scheffler was able to control his distance from the fairway, while Schauffele was guessing on shots out of the rough.
“Scottie was almost in every fairway, it looked like,” Schauffele said. “It looked like he was going through wedge practice while he was out there.”
Indeed, Scheffler missed only two greens and putted for birdie or better on his last 14 holes. The No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking poured it on at the end, and with the head start, he was 16 under.
Still, this chase for the $25 million bonus is far from over, and Scheffler is proof of that. He was the top seed and led by five shots after the first round of the 2022 Tour Championship. That was also the year he took a six-shot lead into the final round and lost to Rory McIlroy.
Only one other top seed led after the first day since this format began in 2019. That was Patrick Cantlay, who led by two and went on to win the FedEx Cup by one shot in 2021.
Collin Morikawa has a history of great starts. He made up a nine-shot deficit in one round last year with a 61. On this day, he ran off six straight birdies on the back nine, and his 66 will put him in the final group with Scheffler on Friday.
Morikawa and Schauffele (70) were at 9 under. Another shot back was a large group that included Adam Scott (66), Hideki Matsuyama (70) and Keegan Bradley (69), who went from No. 50 to No. 4 in the standings by winning the BMW Championship last weekend.
Scoring was not terribly low on the new-look East Lake, with its heavily contoured greens, closely mown areas instead of thick rough and the absence of trees. But then, only one player was over par, with Billy Horschel shooting a 73.
Schauffele at least extended his astonishing streak at the course even with the redesign. He lost a lot of ground on the back nine, but his 70 was the 26th time in 29 rounds at East Lake that he was under par; he has never shot over par at the Atlanta layout.
That wasn’t good enough to keep pace with Scheffler.