How FedExCup Playoffs is determined, starting with The Northern Trust

The 2019-2020 PGA Tour season is fast approaching its close, and that means the FedExCup Playoffs are getting started. The Playoffs open this week with The Northern Trust tournament at TPC Boston.

The current season was altered by the Covid-19 pandemic, but the Tour has been running strong for two months now since restarting with the Charles Schwab Challenge. The Tour will be moving on to the 2020-2021 season in September, but before then, we get the three week race for the FedEx Cup.

The FedExCup features the top 125 golfers and pairs down across three tournaments to eventually crowning a points champion. This year, it starts with The Northern Trust August 20-23. When that tournament wraps, the top 70 golfers in FedExCup points will advance to the BMW Championship. That tournament takes place at Olympia Folds in a Chicago suburb and is August 27-30. Following that tournament, he top 30 golfers advance to the season-ending TOUR Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta. The points leader at the close of the TOUR Championship takes home the top prize.

For the first two playoff events, points are tripled from the regular season. For example, a tournament win normally nets a player 500 points. In the first two playoff tournaments, a win will net a player 1,500 points.

Once they get down to the final 30, the TOUR Championship will feature a format called Starting Strokes. Rather than have all 30 players start with the same score (Even), players will be staggered by strokes based on their FedExCup points standing. The No. 1 player will begin the tournament at 10-under, No. 2 will start with 9-under, and so on through the top five. Nos. 6-10 will start at 4-under, Nos. 11-15 will start at 3-under, Nos. 16-20 at 2 under, Nos. 21-25 at 1 under, and Nos. 26-30 at even par. The player with the lowest total score at the TOUR Championship will be declared the FedExCup Champion.

Below is the current points leaderboard heading into The Northern Trust. Tiger Woods currently ranks 49th as he looks for his record third FedExCup championship. Rory McIlroy ranks 8th as he also looks for his third championship.