Wyndham's POTY rise, Rory's re-animation and Lame Duck East Lake: 10 Things for the Tour Championship

TEN THINGS is a collection of words that runs prior to each week's PGA Tour event, mostly ABOUT that event. Reach out with your hottest takes on absolutely anything at shane.spr8@gmail.com. We'll publish the best emails here.

As I write this, PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp has just announced that startin in 2028, the Tour Championship will be contested as a 32-player, match-play event held over two weeks. It's going to be awesome, but it also means that we are now officially in the Lame Duck Era of the current Tour Championship. Getting pumped for a lame duck is, uh, hard, but let's give it a shot! Let's have some fun! There has to be some fun here, right??

1. THE POTY RACE ACTUALLY HANGS IN THE BALANCE

It's not often that the winner of the Tour Championship can actually determine who wins the tour's player of the year award—usually it's been decided long before—but I think we're in that situation now. Just last week, I wrote that Scottie Scheffler had it almost wrapped up, based on his year-long statistical dominance and his two wins. The only thing that could have changed my mind was one of a very select group of players winning the BMW Championship. Yet as it happened, one of them, Wyndham Clark, did it. Now he's got three wins to Scottie's two, and one major to Scottie's zero, which for me gives him a slight edge despite the fact that Scheffler remains the better golfer statistically.

If Clark wins in Atlanta, he should definitely win POTY, and if Scheffler wins in Atlanta, he should definitely win POTY, which means there's a fun debate to be had if neither comes out on top. As someone who thinks Player of the Year should be heavily but not entirely statistics based, I'd vote for Clark. Would the players do the same, especially considering that Scheffler is arguably the more popular player? I'm not trying to over-inflate the importance of the POTY award—you could easily just say "who cares?" and move on—but anyway, this is about as interesting as it gets.

2. CLARK'S DOMINANCE JUST LOOKS DIFFERENT

Explain this phenomenon to me: I understand logically that Scheffler is the best player on the planet, but there's something about Clark's top gear that makes me think, "Oh yeah, this guy is the alpha." I don't even think I can rationally justify the thought, but something about the way he plays when he's dominating just seems to exist on a different and scarier level than watching Scheffler at his best. Maybe it goes back to the idea that Scheffler just grinds courses and competitors into dust in a way that feels inevitable, where players like Clark or Rory McIlroy have an electricity to them. And maybe that electricity is why they're not as consistent as Scottie. Or maybe that's all complete BS. We need a stat called "SG: Elite" to quantify which player is best when he's having a career tournament.

3. HELLO, EAST LAKE GOLF CLUB

Good to see you again. All going well? Nice, nice. Yeah, everything's good with me. Cool. Have you seen Pebble Beach? I heard Pebble Beach was around earlier. No? Must have just missed it. Cool. Um, yeah, family is good, wife is good, kids are good. School craziness, all that. Are conditions solid for you this week? OK, great. Oh nice, I didn't know you were doing new mowing patterns. Very cool. Very cool. Should be a good weekend. Probably going to be pretty hot, but what's new, right? Summer in Atlanta, for sure. OK, well, I'll let you get going, I know it's a busy week. Really good seeing you. For sure, let's stay in touch. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Take it easy.

4. PERSONAL NEWS: I COULD WIN MY RIDICULOUS SEASON-LONG POOL

I devised this pool I call "Green Asylum" at the start of the year with a simple premise: Starting at the American Express and through the Tour Championship, you pick one winner for all 32 events. All picks are made ahead of time, you can't use any player more than once, and you can pick three wild cards to substitute in when needed, one time only for each guy. In other words, it involves a good amount of work upfront, and almost nothing after. You get points for your player's finish, from 32 points for 1st place to 1 point for 32nd place, and zero for any finish below. The only other caveat is that you put your winners in tiers, eight of them at 4x (quadruple the amount of points), eight at 3x, eight at 2x, eight at 1x.

Got that? Anyway, we had 63 people sign up, and two of them, Scott and Jamie, made an outrageously great spreadsheet that updates automatically with the leaderboard, and includes projected standings. Long story short, after 31 weeks I am in first place, and I am completely giddy. I never win pools, and this one would be a massive triumph because I did a lot of research. (Note that I probably will not win, because my last pick is Russell Henley 2x and there are people with Rory and Scottie at 4x close behind, but I'm going to enjoy this while I can.) Anyway, I mostly say this to brag, but also to encourage you to do this pool with your own friends next year, it's shockingly fun.

5. BACK TO GOLF: IS RORY RE-ASCENDING?

It sounds crazy to say, but I was shocked to see Rory finish third at the BMW. It's mostly because I thought he had gone on full cruise-control mode with the end of majors. Finishing 66th in Memphis felt like the end of the line in the U.S. in 2026—a year in which he played a whopping six events between the Masters and the playoffs. But for brief moments last week, he found some flickers of genius. It almost felt weird. But I'll take it, because deep in my heart I am holding out hope for the thing we never seem to get, which is a legit Rory-Scottie duel on Sunday. With the super reduced field, this feels like our best shot.

6. FIVE OTHER PLAYERS I CARE ABOUT

Matt Fitzpatrick—If he wins, he could have the quadrafecta of tournament win types without a major: A normie (Valspar), a signature (Heritage), a team event (Zurich) and a playoff (Tour Champo)

Cameron Young—If he somehow wins, is he a dark horse POTY candidate?

Tommy Fleetwood—A super quiet year after his triumph here last year, when the biggest story was the company that sponsors his hat, can he repeat?

Chris Gotterup—Officially the most under-the-radar great tour player of the last two decades

Sam Burns—It would be cool to look back on his 2026 campaign, which was legitimately very good, with something more than a vague feeling of sadness

7. ONE NORMIE PICK, ONE WEIRD PICK

Scottie is the normie pick, provided that his hands, feet and mouth have recovered. Despite the fact that it's slim pickings for a "weird" pick with just 30 guys, it feels like a Ryan Fox win would be completely off the wall, so I'll go with him.

8. THE JORDAN SPIETH SADNESS INDEX (JSSI)

He's not playing, but just for old time's sake, I want it on record that two weeks after his "things are about to get good" pronouncement in Memphis, I am only more bullish. I predict two majors in 2027, and the JSSI is at an all-time low of -5.4. Heady optimism prevails.

9. THE ROGUE GOLF TAKE: THE NEW MATCH-PLAY FINALE FORMAT WAS KINDA MY IDEA

Look, all I'm saying is that I came up with the concept of "all 16 players playing all four sessions" to mitigate the TV problem back in 2024 (point no. 3 here), and then made a video about it last year (skip to 1:50 mark). We don't have the exact details of how the final weekend will work yet, but it seems very much like it's the same idea, especially with the core principal of all 16 players playing all four rounds. Do I want credit? Do I want them to name the playoffs after me, and then pay me $5 million?

Yes. That's exactly what I want. Do the right thing, Commissioner Rolapp.

10. THE ROGUE NON-GOLF TAKE: SALADS ARE EASY IF YOU DO THE PREP

I used to eat salad every night as a kid, and even though my eating habits are avowedly awful, I have always been a salad lover. One of my best childhood food memories is the salad bar at Pizza Hut, and I consider myself an aficionado of Italian dressing specifically. The problem is, it's kind of a pain to make a salad every night. But I've got a new system where I get all the ingredients, wash and dry them all on paper towels, store the lettuce and cabbage in their own big bins, store the other ingredients (green peppers, mushrooms, baby carrots and cucumbers, though I think I'm going to stop doing cucumbers and replace them with the slightly harder zucchini because they turn gross too quickly) in those plastic Chinese food soup containers, whip up a dijon vinaigrette in a mason jar, and voila: a little effort, and you've got a salad that takes three seconds to put together for the entire week.

This, to me, is revolutionary. Just make sure you discard the outer layer of lettuce and cabbage so you don't spend the next six months on the toilet. And with that lovely parting thought, we'll see you next year!