2014 TOUR Championship: Previewing the tee times and pairings for Sunday’s round at East Lake

There is just one more round in the PGA Tour season! The final round of the TOUR Championship will start just before Noon on Sunday, the weather relenting for a head-to-head afternoon against the NFL. Rory McIlroy pulled even with Billy Horschel on Saturday and those two will be out again in the day’s final pairing. A win by either would automatically clinch $10 million and the FedEx Cup title. Here are some of the things and people to monitor and follow on Sunday.

The Atlanta forecast at the start of the weekend did not look promising for the FedEx Cup finale. A 60 percent chance of rain and thunderstorms on Friday afternoon forced the Tour to push things up three hours for the second round. A good chance of rain on both Saturday and Sunday also played into that decision, but the weekend has gone smoothly so far at East Lake. Sunday will go off as scheduled, with the final pairing out just after 2 p.m. ET and a scheduled finish set for just before 6 p.m., followed by the trophy ceremony and the presentation of the most lucrative check in golf.

The Comcast duo of Golf Channel and NBC will split the coverage for the postseason finale. Golf Channel will come on the air at Noon, and then NBC will take us home from 1:30 p.m. until the conclusion around 6 p.m. Dan Hicks and Johnny Miller will have the call in two weeks at the Ryder Cup, so we’ll get more caustic commentary on all the choking under pressure before the year is over. But this is the last PGA Tour event of the year on network TV.

For the third straight day, Geoff Ogilvy will play all alone in the first tee time of the day. Ogilvy had a slight chance of making the postseason altogether at the start of August, but he ended his four-year winless drought on the Tour with a victory at the Barracuda Championship. The gave him enough FedEx Cup points to make the postseason, and then a brilliant Sunday showing at the Deutsche Bank was enough to put him on this longshot run all the way to the final leg of the playoffs.

But the momentum has run out in Atlanta, and Ogilvy is the shakiest player in the 29-man field by a wide margin. He’s in last place by a good six shots, which is actually one less than the deficit after just 36 holes (hat tip to an 80 posted by Jordan Spieth in the third round). But he’s still the first player out and that means he’ll be all by himself, thanks to Dustin Johnson, who somehow stayed in the top 30 in the FedEx Cup standings despite never playing in the postseason. DJ is obviously not with us this week, so we have an odd-numbered field and a solo tee time.

Unlike some tournaments, such as the Masters where Augusta National member Jeff Knox gets to play with the pros, the PGA Tour does not force these singles to play with a non-competing “marker” to maintain the normal pace. So these singles should get out on the course and blow through their round.

But I need to see more. Gary Woodland, the No. 29 ranked player in the FEC standings and last man in the field, opened Thursday with a two hour and 50 minute first round. Ogilvy then had the honors on Friday, and got into the house in 2:33. Back out by himself on Saturday, the Aussie actually added two minutes to his round and finished in 2:35.

Geoff, you’ve had a decorated and lucrative career but you’re not going to win this tournament. Just take the last place cash and be happy with an impressive postseason run. Let’s try to accomplish something -- try and beat Rory Sabbatini’s 1:52 mark that he set playing by himself in the final round of the Quicken Loans National in June.

After an ugly August for the USA Ryder Cup prospects, the month of September and the FedEx Cup seemed to heighten optimism. We heard a lot about all the American players that were finding their form prior to the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles. This week hasn’t been encouraging, however, and Sunday’s final round of the TOUR Championship will begin with five American Ryder Cup members in the bottom third of the leaderboard.

Jordan Spieth, Webb Simpson, Hunter Mahan, Patrick Reed, and Zach Johnson are the offending parties deep down the leaderboard and over par. We already knew the Americans weren’t fielding their strongest roster in a competition that they’ve struggled in so much over the past 20 years. But it’s still a little disconcerting to see so much of the team fire over-par rounds and not come close to contending in the final tournament before the Ryder Cup. Let’s watch this group and see if they can post a number before we see them again over in Scotland wearing the red, white, and blue.

Sticking with the American Ryder Cup team, the penultimate pairing will, unsurprisingly, feature their two most consistent players this year -- Rickie Fowler and Jim Furyk. The final pairing will obviously have most of the eyes on it, but this duo features the best option for a come-from-behind FedEx Cup win. Tom Watson will need both these guys to continue in form in two weeks at the Ryder Cup. They will be his top two options, which may be an indicator of where things stand for Team USA right now. At the start of the week, I predicted a Rickie win and FedEx Cup title so I’ll be especially focused on watching whether or not he can pull off a chasedown. The big names got split up in the final round, but I think this is the most intriguing tee time of the day.

Billy Horschel will anchor the tee sheet for the fourth straight day. It’s just that this time he’ll start it off with the No. 1 player in the world sharing the lead. Horschel began the week with FedEx Cup points leader Chris Kirk and quickly posted a bogey-free round of 66. He backed that up with another 66 to take a two-shot lead at the midpoint. But that margin evaporated on Saturday, as McIlroy played side-by-side and closed the gap to get to 9-under and the 54-hole co-lead. Horschel is No. 2 in the standings and Rory is No. 4, so they both hold that “control your own destiny” card in which a win at the TOUR Championship automatically means they win the FedEx Cup and $10 million.

These two have a history that goes back to their amateur days, when Rory said Billy “really pissed him off” and was “obnoxious” at the Walker Cup. That animosity has reportedly dissipated and the the two were quite jovial and friendly on Saturday at East Lake. They had also willingly played rounds together before this week. But the pressure and emotion will get ramped up on Sunday afternoon given all the cash on the table. This is about as good a Sunday final pairing as the Tour could have hoped for at the start of the week.

Here’s the full tee sheet for Sunday’s final round at East Lake: