2026 Tour Championship Round 1 Tee Times, Pairings at East Lake
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- East Lake Golf Club hosts the 2026 Tour Championship starting Thursday at 11 a.m. ET, with the top 30 in FedEx Cup standings competing over 72 holes under the revised format in which no player receives staggered starting strokes.
- Scottie Scheffler enters as the No. 1 seed having already collected $23 million in bonus payouts from the BMW Championship, separating the seeding bonus from what the Tour Championship purse will award.
- Tommy Fleetwood, who won the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup as his first PGA Tour victory under last year's new level-footing format, headlines a group of winless 2026 players inside the top 12 that also includes Ludvig Åberg, Xander Schauffele, Si Woo Kim, and Sam Burns.
- Wyndham Clark, Matt Fitzpatrick, and Chris Gotterup are tied for the most wins on the year with three each, with Clark entering off last week's BMW Championship victory.
- Marquee Round 1 pairings send Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele off at 12:54 p.m., Tommy Fleetwood and Ludvig Åberg at 1:12 p.m., and Scottie Scheffler with Matt Fitzpatrick in the final group at 2 p.m.
Why it matters: The level-footing format that produced Fleetwood's first career win last year has reset the stakes: five top-12 players haven't won all year, leaving the FedEx Cup genuinely up for grabs over four days. Scheffler's $23 million seeding bonus is already locked in, but for the other 29 players, every shot at East Lake carries the full weight of the season-ending title.
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