Golf's Tour Championship once gave its leader a head start
For six seasons the PGA Tour's finale began before anyone hit a shot: the points leader teed off at ten under par, while the last qualifiers started at even. The idea, borrowed from Nordic combined skiing, was to make sure the tournament winner and the season champion were the same person.
The Tour Championship began in 1987 as a November showdown for the season's top 30 money winners, scheduled the week after Europe's Volvo Masters so players on both tours could enter both. With so small a field there was no halfway cut, and everyone who teed off earned something. After several host courses, it alternated between Houston and Atlanta from 1997, and East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta became its permanent home in 2004.
In 2007 it moved to September to close the new FedEx Cup playoffs, and qualification switched from prize money to season-long points. That created an awkward possibility: one golfer could win the tournament while another took the overall cup. In 2018 exactly that happened. Tiger Woods won at East Lake, but having arrived 20th in the standings he finished second overall, while Justin Rose, who arrived second and tied for fourth, claimed the cup.
The fix, from 2019, was the staggered start, modelled on the Gundersen method used in Nordic combined, where the day's leaders set off first. The second-ranked player began at eight under, the third at seven, and so on, with players ranked 26th to 30th starting at even par. World ranking points ignored the handicap and counted only strokes actually played.
Smaller tweaks aimed at drama too. East Lake's closing hole had been a par 3 that fans found flat, so from 2016 the nines were reversed to finish on a par 5. In May 2025 the Tour dropped the head start altogether: everyone begins level, the lowest total wins, and the purse rose to $40 million.
Source: Tour Championship
