Model's Surprising 2026 FedEx St. Jude Picks
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- The 2026 FedEx St. Jude Championship tees off Thursday at TPC Southwind in Memphis as the first leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs, with the top 70 in the standings competing and only the top 50 advancing to the BMW Championship.
- Scottie Scheffler sits atop both the FedEx Cup points leaderboard and the odds board at +500 via FanDuel, ahead of Rory McIlroy (+1200), Xander Schauffele (+1800), and Tommy Fleetwood (+2000).
- SportsLine's proprietary model, which has nailed 17 majors including the 2026 Masters, projects Schauffele to miss the top 10 despite his third-lowest odds, noting he has just one top-10 finish since May and is winless on the 2026 PGA Tour schedule.
- Sam Burns is the model's top-3 pick at +2200, backed by ranking 12th on tour in strokes gained: total and third in strokes gained: putting—metrics the model cites as ideal for TPC Southwind.
- The tournament carries a $20 million purse with quadrupled FedEx Cup points, meaning a single week's results can dramatically reshape the playoff standings.
- The model is also targeting one longshot priced higher than +3000 to make a strong leaderboard run, though that pick is gated behind SportsLine's paywall.
Why it matters: With quadrupled FedEx Cup points and a hard top-50 cutoff for the BMW Championship, bettors using the model could exploit market mispricings—specifically fading Schauffele at +1800, backing Sam Burns at +2200, and targeting an unnamed +3000 longshot the model projects to contend at TPC Southwind.
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