2026 TOUR Championship Power Rankings: Top 10 Golfers To Watch

August 26, 2026

Ian McNeill ranks his top-10 players to watch at the 2026 TOUR Championship from East Lake GC. His data-backed insights into who is primed for success.

While the talk of the TOUR is of the revised FedEx Cup format coming two years, the 30 best players of 2026 are gathered in Atlanta for this season's title. Unlike much of the last 10 years, 2026 will feature a format that opens up possibilities for every man in attendance.

With no starting strokes, last year's final at East Lake was decided between Tommy Fleetwood, Patrick Cantlay, and Russell Henley: a threesome with just one win between them in 2025.

Will another underdog story emerge in Atlanta? Or will the marquee names restore order? Here are the 10 players I feel are most likely to wear the season-long crown (and see that $10,000,000 direct deposit on Sunday afternoon).

No. 10 - Russell Henley

It was always going to be tough for Russell Henley to replicate his 2025 campaign that placed him firmly as the fourth-best player on the PGA TOUR, but while the underlying numbers have taken a step back in 2026, Henley will have a golden chance to surpass last year's win total.

East Lake has been as safe a haven for Russell as anyone in the field -- ranking third in Strokes Gained per round across his five career starts -- and he gave Tommy Fleetwood his biggest competition in last year's TOUR Championship, the first edition without a staggered start since 2018.

And the recent form should only add to his optimism, as Russell's +5.41 approach rating at Bellerive stands as his best iron performance since winning the Charles Schwab in May. He's as elite as they come at keeping the ball in the fairway, and enters East Lake as the fourth-best Bermuda-grass putter in the field.

As we've seen throughout his career in Atlanta, the Georgian's profile is almost perfectly suited to East Lake's classical layout: accuracy off the tee, elite iron play, and a putting stroke that tends to come alive on Bermuda. As the 15th man on many odds boards, I see him as one of the more underrated commodities of the week.

No. 9 - Xander Schauffele

Xander Schauffele has yet to truly contend for a title in 2026, but over the last decade, nobody has been as consistent of a force at East Lake Golf Club. In eight starts since 2017, Schauffele has never finished outside the top seven — winning on debut in 2017 and logging runner-up finishes on three occasions (2019, 2020 and 2023).

And while no singular skill has repeatedly carried Xander in this incredible run, he sits inside the top 10 in each of the four Strokes Gained categories here across his last 20 rounds.

And recent signs are pointing his way as well, as Schauffele has put together ball-striking performances of +4.7, +10.1, +2.8 and +3.5 in his last four starts since The Open -- and if not for an uncharacteristic lapse with his short game in St. Louis, could have easily notched his third consecutive top-10.

Maybe that's the best way to describe Xander's appeal this week: there simply isn't a glaring weakness to exploit. He's proven he can win here, proven he can contend here, and arrives with his ball-striking trending in the right direction. The breakthrough hasn't come yet for Xander in 2026, but his track record in Atlanta suggests this is as prime of an opportunity as he'll get.

No. 8 - Collin Morikawa

Collin Morikawa sticks it to within a foot for birdie to move closer to the lead 🎯🔥

📺 CBS pic.twitter.com/GnLDkxUUK5

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) August 23, 2026

A few untimely missed putts ultimately cost Collin a chance to catch a reeling Wyndham Clark on Sunday afternoon, but signs continue to tell a compelling story of his being among the more underrated commodities on the PGA TOUR.

Entering the week as the seventh seed in the standings, it's easy to forget that Collin's back cost him a large portion of the season. And while he acknowledged in the press that he's not completely past his ailment entirely, the underlying ball-striking splits are looking more and more like the guy who looked to be making a charge towards Player of the Year honors through the season's first few months.

Collin gained over five shots to the field between his driving and iron play around Bellerive last week — a course that many thought would be the weakest pure course fit of the three playoff venues.

That course-fit concern won't be argued here, as Morikawa has finished top-six in three of his six career appearances at East Lake, and has never lost strokes off the tee or on approach.

Like Henley, he checks essentially every box, and unlike previous iterations, Morikawa will enter this year's TOUR Championship with a positive outlook on the greens: enjoying his best-ever putting season as a professional, and the eighth-best mark in this elite field when isolating for his last 30 rounds. If the putting continues to hold serve, it's only a matter of time before Collin captures his 9th professional title.

No. 7 - Si Woo Kim

It's hard to believe that despite all Si Woo Kim has accomplished in his 11 years on Tour, 2026 will only be his third invite to East Lake.

And unlike the first two times he's received top-30 honors, Si Woo will arrive at this year's TOUR Championship as one of the headline names -- fifth in the season-long standings and third on Tour from tee to green.

And now, playing some of the best golf of his life, Si Woo should be considered a legitimate threat to capture the PGA TOUR's crown jewel. Three of his four career wins have come on positional Bermuda-grass golf courses, with his first at the 2016 Wyndham coming on another Donald Ross original at Sedgefield.

One look at the statistical profile makes the fit pretty obvious. Kim's game is largely carried by an elite combination of driving accuracy and iron play -- precisely the strengths that should allow him to thrive around East Lake. And with 12 top-10s and 18 top-25s in 19 starts this season, the only thing missing from an otherwise remarkable 2026 campaign is the trophy.

No. 6 - Tommy Fleetwood

"You can't win plenty if you don't win the first one." 🗣️

Tommy Fleetwood looks back on his first PGA TOUR win and claiming the FedExCup @TOURChamp as he returns to defend his title.

(Presented by @Darktrace) pic.twitter.com/CoeIUv0PhE

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 26, 2026

It hasn't exactly been the lead-in Tommy Fleetwood had ahead of his iconic TOUR Championship victory 12 months ago, but if his exploits in Europe are any indication, he's got every chance of defending his FedExCup title.

Fleetwood has long shown an ability to carry momentum across the pond, winning the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in back-to-back seasons in 2017 and 2018 before doing the same at the Nedbank Golf Challenge in 2019 and 2022. Last year's triumph at East Lake finally delivered the PGA TOUR title that had eluded him for so long; now, he'll return with the chance to defend it against 29 of the best players in the world.

He logged the second-best putting week of his entire PGA TOUR career here 12 months ago, and arrives at this year's iteration with the field's best short-game output and third-best driving-accuracy rating. Tommy will just need his signature iron play to refire -- a facet that has fallen to roughly one-third of his career-best 2025 output -- to create enough chances to let those strengths do the rest.

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No. 5 - Patrick Cantlay

After spending virtually all of Sunday as the 30th man out, Patrick Cantlay closed with three birdies on Bellerive's demanding closing stretch to finish solo second and vault all the way to the 19th seed in the season-long standings.

With his sixth straight East Lake bid secured, Pat arrives as one of the hottest players in the field. He's finished 2nd, 12th, and 8th already in the month of August, and his +13.16 tee-to-green rating at the BMW -- the best in the field by more than five shots -- only furthered the case. Cantlay now enters East Lake as the Tour's second-best ball-striker across his last 36 rounds.

Couple that form with an East Lake track record that includes a win in 2021, a runner-up last year, and finishes of fifth and seventh in 2022 and 2023, and there's a very strong argument to be made that Cantlay belongs among the favorites this week.

No. 4 - Sam Burns

It says a lot about Sam Burns' place in the game that a T28 at the BMW Championship came as one of the shocks of the week. But nevertheless, the question on everyone's mind is the same heading into East Lake.

Was the BMW result simply a one-week blip in a summer where Burns has established himself as one of the top five players on the planet? Or is it a marker of the end of the Sam Burns eclipse that ruled the PGA Tour for much of the summer?

I lean towards the latter, as the ball-striking progression that has carried much of this surge was well in tact around Bellerive. Burns gained another 2.1 strokes to the field last week with his iron play and hit over 66% of his greens: a mark that sat him right between Scottie Scheffler and Collin Morikawa in the weekly stats.

For the first time since a T20 in Canada, however, the short game provided the biggest detriment to Sam's final finish -- losing over a stroke to the field putting and another 2.2 around the greens.

At East Lake, however, Burns will face the closest agronomic comp to TPC Southwind we have all year (Bermudagrass greens; Zoysia fairways) -- a venue that saw him log his best putting week (+4.62) of this entire summer. And while he hasn't had the best final round luck as of late, Burns already has five wins to his name at 30-years-old -- most recently toppling Scottie Scheffler, Cameron Young, and Patrick Cantlay, en route to the match play title. He's got every chance of playing spoiler again this week.

After his win at last week's BMW, Wyndham Clark proclaimed himself "one of the best players in the world." Given his resume, his peers could very well be vote him as their player of the year in a few months time. And a win at East Lake would leave no doubt entering 2027 that he's the main man chasing Scottie Scheffler for sole supremacy in the sport.

Wyndham has admitted his career has run more hot and cold than most of his fellow elite players, but when things are working as they are right now, it's difficult to find any venue where his game won't translate. He's arguably won at both the most difficult and the easiest course on the 2026 schedule -- Shinnecock Hills and Craig Ranch. He's conquered positional tests like Pebble Beach and bomber's paradises's like Bellerive last week, and on virtually every different grass type and every region in the country.

This year in particular, the defining factor has been his iron play -- which currently sits top 20 on Tour -- far and away the best season-long standing of his career. Combine that with elite power and a putting stroke that many say is as pure as anyone on Tour, and Collin Morikawa said it best: "it's just hard to compete sometimes."

The only lingering question is the price, as Wyndham now sits 3rd or 4th on most odds boards -- far away from the comfortable range he sat at for each of his three wins this season. I'm inclined to agree with the man himself, though: Wyndham Clark is absolutely one of the best players in the world, and given his history in two starts around East Lake (3rd and 8th in 2023 and 2024 respectively), he should be considered a serious threat to produce a Cantlay/Hovland/Scheffler-esque run to the FedEx Cup title.

The only three-time winner of the FedEx Cup looks to be waking up from his post-Masters slumber. After going five months without a top five finish, including two rather irrelevant showings the the U.S. Open/Open Championships and a near dead-last finish to open the playoffs in Memphis, McIlroy swiftly turned the jets back on at Bellerive: ranking second in SG: Off-the-Tee, third in Bogey Avoidance, and gained strokes on approach for the first time since June's Memorial Tournament.

And now he'll head to East Lake -- a place of redemption for McIlroy in the past. Though he admitted he wasn't perhaps the best player over the course of his three seasons as the FedEx Cup Champion, "it felt like a way to redeem myself or end the year on a really positive note."

The same opportunity is at hand this week, and I wouldn't want to bet against him. After all, in 2019 and 2022, McIlroy went head-to-head with the top dogs of the time (Koepka and Scheffler) and came out on top. Perhaps we're destined for another round of World No's 1 and 2 four years later.

We're approaching the five-year mark of Scottie Scheffler's reign, and while 2026 has been far from the most dominant season of that stretch, there remains little doubt who oddsmakers will favor on a week-to-week basis.

Long considered the best ball-striker since Tiger himself, Scottie's 2026 has instead been defined by the best putting baseline of his career. Three years removed from ranking 162nd on Tour in Strokes Gained: Putting, Scheffler sits sixth after the BMW Championship. He's gained strokes in all but four of his 19 starts, and proved in Memphis two weeks ago that when the ceiling shows up -- to the tune of a ridiculous +8.92 SG rating -- it's no longer a fair fight, even among the best players the PGA Tour has to offer.

There's simply nobody in the game with a higher week-to-week floor. And any idea of taking Scheffler on head-to-head must come with the understanding that a runaway is possible every time he tees it up.

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