FedEx St. Jude Championship 2026: 69 Players, 50 Advance

Sixty-nine of the top 70 in the FedEx Cup standings tee it up at TPC Southwind this week, and 19 of them will be finished for the season by Sunday night. The FedEx St. Jude Championship 2026 runs Thursday through Sunday in Memphis, and only the top 50 in the standings after 72 holes advance to the BMW Championship at Bellerive.

Daniel Berger is the lone qualifier not in the field, per the PGA Tour. There are no cuts in playoff events, so every one of the other 69 plays four rounds and the points math is live from the first tee shot Thursday.

The winner banks 750 FedEx Cup points. That is the number that reshuffles the board.

FedEx St. Jude Championship 2026 Field: Who Is Actually Playing For What

Scottie Scheffler enters at No. 1 in the standings on the back of one win and five runner-up finishes, the most recent of those at the 3M Open. He won the FedEx Cup in 2024.

Rory McIlroy skipped this event last year and has not played since The Open Championship. Per the PGA Tour, this is the first time since 2021 that he starts the playoff opener outside the top 10 in the standings, though he has three top-5 finishes in eight starts at TPC Southwind and is chasing a fourth FedEx Cup title. He won the Masters in April and has four other top-10s.

Tommy Fleetwood arrives as the defending FedEx Cup champion at No. 9, and he has not finished outside the top 15 since missing the cut at the PGA Championship. Justin Rose, now 46, defends the tournament title he won in a playoff over J.J. Spaun last year, with a Farmers Insurance Open win already on his 2026 card. The PGA Tour notes nobody has successfully defended this title since it became part of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.

The standings order behind Scheffler runs Matt Fitzpatrick, Cameron Young, Wyndham Clark, Chris Gotterup, Collin Morikawa, Si Woo Kim, Sam Burns, Fleetwood and Ludvig Aberg. Fitzpatrick and Gotterup have three wins each this season. Ryan Fox is back for the first time since winning The Open, at No. 22.

The Real Cut Line Is 50, and It Is Measured in Points

The trophy is one story. The bubble at No. 50 is the one that moves prices.

Maverick McNealy holds the 50th spot by 27 points over Harris English at No. 51, with Keith Mitchell at No. 49 only five points ahead of McNealy. Max Homa (No. 52), Sungjae Im (No. 53) and Jordan Spieth (No. 54) are all inside one good week of the line.

Those margins are smaller than a single made putt on Sunday. A player at No. 51 who finishes T20 in a 69-man no-cut field can pass three people without ever being on television.

Michael Brennan is here because he won the Wyndham Championship on Sunday and jumped from No. 105 to No. 47, which knocked Steven Fisk out. Jackson Koivun held the 70th and final spot and, per the PGA Tour, matched Tiger Woods for the fewest starts (five) needed to reach the playoffs.

The Course: Par 70, 7,288 Yards, and Water Everywhere

TPC Southwind is a Ron Prichard design that opened in 1988 and plays to a par 70 at 7,288 yards. The property is threaded with lakes, streams and ponds, and it converted fully to Zeon zoysiagrass in 2023 with some fairways re-contoured after new internal drainage went in.

Hideki Matsuyama owns the 72-hole course record at 263 (2024). The 18-hole mark is 61, which the PGA Tour's tournament preview lists as shared by Tom Lewis (third round, 2020), Bob Estes (first round, 2001) and Jay Delsing (fourth round, 1993). The PGA Tour separately reported Justin Rose matching 61 here in 2023, so the defending champion belongs on that list too.

Translation for a betting card: this is not Sedgefield. The Wyndham gave up a 22-under winning total and a closing 61 last week. Southwind asks for position off the tee and punishes a miss on the wrong side of water, so recent birdie binges are the least portable form signal in the field.

Betting and DFS Impact

Three things worth holding onto before you price this week.

1. Scheffler is short and the market knows why. DraftKings had him +445 with Rory McIlroy +950 in its full-field post published Aug. 9 at 22:12 UTC. Xander Schauffele (+1900), Fleetwood (+1950) and Sam Burns (+2000) headed the next tier. A sub-5-to-1 golf favorite is a statement about a 69-man field, not about certainty. 2. That DraftKings board was published before qualifying finished. It still carried Steven Fisk at +27500 and did not list Michael Brennan at all, because Brennan had not yet played his way in when the numbers went up. Any early outright you took off that board was priced against a field that no longer exists. Re-shop it. 3. The top-50 market is where the value hides. Books will hang top-20 and make-the-BMW style props all week. McNealy, English, Keith Mitchell, Homa, Im and Spieth are separated by points totals in the double digits, which means those props are effectively coin flips priced off season-long name recognition rather than this week's course fit.

For DFS, the no-cut format is the entire strategy. Every roster spot returns four rounds of scoring, so floor plays lose most of their usual value and you are hunting ceiling in a small field. Koivun (+4100) and Justin Thomas (+4100) sit at the same number for very different reasons.

What to Watch Next

First tee times are Thursday. Golf Channel has Thursday and Friday from 2 to 6 p.m. ET, with Saturday and Sunday split between Golf Channel (1 to 3) and CBS (3 to 6). PGA Tour Live runs on the ESPN App from 7:45 a.m.

Watch McIlroy's first competitive round since The Open, watch whether Brennan's closing 63-64 travels to a course that plays nothing like Sedgefield, and watch the No. 48 through No. 54 names on the leaderboard on Sunday afternoon. That is where the week actually gets decided.

For how the field was set, see our Wyndham Championship winner recap. Full field notes and standings are at the PGA Tour. Chad AI prices every outright, matchup and top-20 market on this slate inside the StatSniper app, on the PGA daily picks page and the AI sports picks hub. Compare more edges at the Chad picks hub.

FAQ

When is the FedEx St. Jude Championship 2026? Thursday through Sunday at TPC Southwind in Memphis, Tennessee. It is the first leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs and there is no cut.

How many players advance from the FedEx St. Jude Championship? The top 50 in the FedEx Cup standings after this week move on to the BMW Championship at Bellerive. The field then shrinks to 30 for the Tour Championship at East Lake.

Who is the favorite at TPC Southwind? Scottie Scheffler, at +445 on DraftKings as of Aug. 9. Rory McIlroy was next at +950, followed by Xander Schauffele at +1900.

How many players are in the FedEx St. Jude Championship field? Sixty-nine. All of the top 70 in the standings are eligible, but Daniel Berger is not playing.

---

*21+. Gambling problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER. Stat Sniper provides data and projections for informational purposes; you are responsible for your own wagers.*