Paulie's Picks: 2025 FedEx St. Jude Championship

The FedEx Cup Playoffs start this week with the FedEx St Jude Championship at TPC Southwind. This 69-player, no-cut field (absent Rory McIlroy) will battle to get into the top 50 in the season-long standings to advance to next week’s BMW Championship. I know this is the playoffs, but it just doesn’t have the same postseason feel as other sports. Heck, Rory is just skipping this event because his results don’t matter as he will already be in the field for the Tour Championship, where there is no starting stroke advantage this year. The PGA Tour needs to figure something out for the playoffs in 2026. Enough complaining about the playoff format, let’s dig into the course the players face this week.

TPC Southwind is a par 70 that stretches out beyond 7,200 yards and heavily rewards ball-strikers. There is a large penalty here for errant shots due to the difficult bermuda rough and large amounts of hazards in play both off the tee and on approach. Over the course of 72 holes, players who aren’t striking the ball well will be exposed. The greens here are small and aren’t overly difficult to putt on. Most years we have seen players in contention gain the majority of their strokes off the tee and on approach, whereas many other weeks on Tour we see hot putters near the top. As such, let’s take a look at two ball-strikers to target this week:

Top 20: Matt Fitzpatrick, +110

Fitzpatrick has been on a tear recently with top-eight finishes in his last four events. He hasn’t finished outside the top 40 in a start since before the Masters. Most of this success has come from gaining a large number of strokes off the tee and on approach. He has played very well at this event, finishing in the top 20 in four of the last six years.

Top 20: Viktor Hovland, +120

Hovland has had a quietly consistent year and yet books are pricing him this week as if he is struggling. He made the cut in all four majors with three top 30s, including a third-place finish at the U.S. Open. He also won earlier this season at the Valspar Championship. He has been striking his irons brilliantly as he has gained strokes on approach in every event since the season-opener at Kapalua. Hovland has improved his finishing position at this event each of the last five years (59th, 36th, 20th, 13th, second). Look for him to be in contention this week and help us cash a top-20 wager at +120.