BATON ROUGE– Former LSU great, Sam Burns, is set to tee off at the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta, Ga. on Thursday morning at 10:48 p.m. CT.
The Tour Championship concludes the 2022-23 PGA tour season and will crown the winner with the FedEx Cup. The unique format for the season finale began in 2019 and has been dubbed, “starting strokes.” This format was introduced to ensure that the winner of the tournament would also be named the FedEx Cup Champion.
Burns comes in as the 26th seed in the field of 30 and will begin round one at even par. Golfers start at different scores to begin based on their FedEx Cup standings that have tracked all season long. The field leader, Scottie Scheffler, will begin the tournament at 10-under par.
Burns entered last week’s BMW Championship on the bubble at No. 30 in the FedEx cup standings. He will be making his third consecutive start at the Tour Championship after he moved up four spots with a T15 finish last week at the BMW event. Burns finished last year’s championship in 24th place at 7-under par.
The winner on Sunday will be given a five-year exemption and also take home a significant prize of $18 million. Second place will take home $6.5 million which totals more than what a winner would receive at any other event on tour.
Qualifying for the event earns you a two-year exemption on the PGA Tour and will also earn entry into the Masters. The Tour Championship is easily the wealthiest in terms of prize money as even a 30th place finish will earn you $500,000.
The Tour Championship will be aired daily on the golf channel as well as Peacock, CBS, and on ESPN+ for various portions of the event.