The long, winding road that is the PGA Tour comes to an end this week in Atlanta. Who do you like? The guy with the most FedEx points? The top-rated guy? The best fit for the East Lake Golf Club? The hottest guy? The guy with the best Vegas odds? Some (semi-)longshot?

Let’s start by eliminating 10 guys.

Paul Casey – Playing his worst golf of the last year; no U.S. top-20 since June.
Patton Kizzire – Playing far worse than anyone else in the field; no top-10 since winning the Sony in January.
Marc Leishman – No top-10 since May.
Phil Mickelson – Not a good fit for the course and probably a LOT more focused on the Ryder Cup next week.
Kevin Na – Playing well recently but not much of a fit for the course.
Jon Rahm – One missed cut and two outside-the-top-20 finishes in the FedEx series to date.
Patrick Reed – Last top-10 in the U.S. was the U.S. Open, and not a great fit for the course.
Xander Schauffele – Pops up with a nice finish once in a while (e.g. the BMW), but winning it two years in a row? Seems unlikely.
Kyle Stanley – In the bottom third in the field in overall rating, and with one top-10 in the last three months.
Aaron Wise – Great job to get here as a rookie but ahead of only Kizzire in the rankings.

To be clear, there are two championships available here. One is the FedEx Cup and its $10 million bonus. That’s based on the player’s FedEx Cup points. The other is the Tour Championship event. That’s this weekend’s golf tournament. After a stretch of several years where it was the same guy for both, last year Xander Schauffele won the event and Justin Thomas won the $10 million.

Now let’s look at it from the top down, focusing on winning the event.

The guy with the most FedEx points is also the hottest guy. That’s Bryson DeChambeau, who won the first two events in the FedEx series and then was 19th in the BMW.

The top-rated guy is Justin Rose per the Official World Golf Ratings, or Dustin Johnson if you read the Hawley Ratings (which are statistically more accurate).

The top statistics in correlation with success at East Lake are driving distance, scrambling, and driving accuracy, in that order, per the Hawley course fit statistics. The top three whose profiles best match those stats are close – Rory McIlroy, Johnson, and Gary Woodland, in that order. Also just a bit behind are Bubba Watson, Thomas, Jason Day, Tommy Fleetwood. And Rahm.

The odds, of course, vary by offeror. The top two choices at 8-1 are Johnson and Rose. McIlroy is at the same number or just a bit behind. There is no bargain in the betting odds until you get to Rickie Fowler, who is 16-1, which this site calculates as his true odds. Tony Finau offers a glimmer of value at 20-1 in the betting vs. true odds of 18-1. Likewise, Day is at 22-1 in the betting vs. 20-1 in true odds.

Leaning toward Finau.

Good luck. Hope you enjoyed the season with Tom Hawley’s A Look at Golf.