ATLANTA – Scottie Scheffler started with a two-stroke lead in the staggered-start leaderboard at the Tour Championship. By day’s end, it had more than doubled to five strokes over Xander Schauffele.
Scheffler birdied the final three holes to shoot 5-under 65 at East Lake Golf Club and improved to 15 under after the opening round of the FedEx Cup finale.
“It’s a bit strange,” Scheffler said of starting the round at 10 under with a two-stroke lead. “That’s why I talk a lot about not looking at the leaderboards and stuff like that because if I try and go out and do my best and pretend like I’m trying to win a regular stroke-play event for four days, I think I’m going to be in a good position come Sunday afternoon, so that’s going to be my plan going forward.”
Scheffler made his first birdie of the day at the third hole and drilled a 3-iron from 230 yards at the par-5 sixth hole and poured in a 17-foot eagle putt. His lead grew to as many as six strokes at one point as Patrick Cantlay, the defending FedEx Cup champion and winner of last week’s BMW Championship, managed to only shoot even-par 70.
What would it mean to Scheffler to cap off his season with the FedEx Cup trophy on Sunday? “It would definitely be the icing on the cake for the year,” he said.
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Xander Schauffele eats up East Lake again
Xander Schauffele walks off the 18th green during the first round of the TOUR Championship golf tournament. Mandatory Credit: Adam Hagy-USA TODAY Sports
Schauffele, who won the Tour Championship in 2017 and has never finished worse than T-7 in his previous five starts here, continued his stellar play at East Lake. He shot 66, a stroke better than his career scoring average at the course of 67.2 in 21 rounds. Schauffele is alone in second five strokes behind Scheffler and a stroke better than U.S. Open champion Matt Fitzpatrick.
For Schauffele, the key to his round was hitting 10 of 14 fairways on a day when overnight rain led to preferred lies in the fairway and rain during the round softened the course.
“I just really worried about hitting the fairway on every hole,” he said. “Sort of started off each hole as its own tournament and was just trying to put it in the fairway because once you have ball in hand, the greens are a little bit more receptive than normal and you have to be aggressive.”
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