All Roads Lead to East Lake
Alex Easton, section editor
As the golf season wraps up, this season has seen many special stories and moments over the past year. Emerging stars, resurging stars and unseen victors coming to the forefront of the golf world. Understanding how the FedEx Cup is scored and play can be a little complicated to understand. Yet as the tour championship wraps up with Scottie Scheffler winning the FedEx cup, the Season of golf is coming to a close.
This Personal Golf Association season was filled with plenty of action from the start to the very end, Rory Mclory winning his second Masters, to Aaron Rai being the first English man to take the win at the PGA championship at Aronimink Golf Club this May. This season was also marked by up-in-coming stars making their marks during their own respective tournaments, one of the many being Jackson Koivun. Forgoing his collegiate senior season at Auburn, Koivun turned pro. After almost one month on the tour, he won the 3M Open at TPC Twin cities over the likes of Scheffler, Hideki Matsuyama and Ryan Fox. Another rising star on the tour is Akshay Bhatia, who is rapidly building his reputation on the tour only at only 23 years old. So far in his three years on the tour, he has one win at the Arnold Palmer invitational, along with respectable finishes at major tournaments, such as the U.S. Open in 2024 where he tied at 16 at Shinnecock Hills. Although these new stars didn’t make it far in the FedEx Cup this year, the future for them looks very strong
The FedEx Cup is a set of three tournaments that each have their own purpose, which makes them important to how the tour championship of the cup is played. During the weeks of August and in the weeks before, the tour pros battle it out trying to place high enough in the rankings to qualify for the FedEx Cup Qualifiers. The Qualifiers for tour championship function as a cut system if the player is below the line they are sent home, and then repeat until it gets down to 30 players. It once used a staggered start system where pros who ranked higher were given a headstart, but this was reworked in 2025 to level the playing field for everyone so that anyone is in contention no matter their ranking. After the weekend at East Lake, Scheffler won his second FedEx Cup in two years. As the season comes to an end all many fans can look forward to is the next season of surprise and excitement.