FedEx St. Jude Championship Odds: The AI Model Verdict
Updated August 10, 2026 · 11 min read · Jake Hari
The FedEx St. Jude Championship is the opposite of the wide-open week that just closed the regular season. It is the first event of the FedExCup Playoffs, a no-cut, 69-man field of only the top 70 points earners, played on a tight, accuracy-first course at TPC Southwind in Memphis where the world's best player is a clear favorite. Kalshi turned that field into a board of yes/no player contracts, one winner and everyone else a loser, and priced Scottie Scheffler well clear of the pack. We asked five AI models to score the whole board without letting any of them see a single price. They came back agreeing that Scheffler is the man to beat, and disagreeing with the crowd on exactly how much probability belongs to the top of a strong field versus the long tail.
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The Quick Answer
Kalshi makes Scottie Scheffler the winner favorite near 16 cents, more than triple the next name, with Rory McIlroy (~5.3¢), Xander Schauffele (~4.5¢) and Cameron Young (~4¢) leading a deep second tier. Our price-blind, five-model panel agrees on the favorite, blending Scheffler to about 16.7%, but it is more bullish on the top of the field than the crowd: it lifts Rory McIlroy to ~7.7% and Xander Schauffele to ~6.6%, likes red-hot 2024 Memphis champion Hideki Matsuyama at ~5.1%, and hands only about 17% to "The Field," every winner not among the 26 names the market prices up. The one number to read with caution runs the other way on Cameron Young, near 4 cents on the market and under 2% on the panel: the models' price-blind card did not include Young's recent form, so that gap says more about the card than about Young, and we flag it below. The full model-by-model board, the names the panel backs over the market, and the placement-market angle for DFS all sit below.
The panel's headline is not that the favorite is mispriced. It is that a truly elite, no-cut field has fewer live longshots than the crowd's long tail implies, so the value clusters in the top ten.
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The Market At A Glance
| Venue | Kalshi, a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange (18+; availability varies by state, as of August 2026) |
| The Event | "FedEx St. Jude Championship Winner" (Kalshi event KXPGATOUR-FESJC26), a yes/no contract for each player in the field, 69 contracts on the board |
| The Contract | Each market resolves YES if that player wins the 2026 FedEx St. Jude Championship, 72-hole stroke play, no cut, a playoff decides ties |
| When | August 13 to 16, 2026, TPC Southwind, Memphis, Tennessee; Kalshi's expected settlement is August 16 |
| Prices Below As Of | August 10, 2026 (latest snapshot; prices on this page refresh as the market moves during tournament week) |
These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. Kalshi event contracts trade on a CFTC-regulated exchange; you must be 18 or older and in an eligible state to participate. Every number in this piece gets graded in public once the market settles, in the full graded Model Verdict scoreboard.
The Setup: A Strong Field, Not A Wide-Open One
Two facts about this event drive every number below, and both are structural.
First, this is the FedExCup Playoffs opener. Only the top 70 in FedExCup points after the regular season qualified, and the field is 69 because Daniel Berger did not enter, per the tournament field report. That makes this one of the strongest, deepest fields of the year, roughly 44 of the top 50 in the world, with no bubble players and no weekend cut, so every entrant plays all four rounds. It is the near-inverse of last week's regular-season finale, and it is why a single favorite can carry real double-digit weight here.
Second, the course rewards precision over power. TPC Southwind is a par 70 with tight driving lines, small targets, thick Bermuda rough and water in play on eleven holes; as one preview put it, medium-length hitters tend to prevail and you do not have to be long to contend. Winning scores land in the mid-teens under par: Hideki Matsuyama won at 17 under in 2024, and Justin Rose took the 2025 title in a playoff at 16 under. The accuracy premium spreads outcomes a little, which is exactly why the models cap even Scheffler well short of a coin flip.
Put those together and you get a tournament that is top-heavy but not a runaway. The favorite is the best and most consistent player in the world on a course that fits him, but 68 other elite players and a precision test keep the door open. The panel and the market both hand the largest single slice to "The Field," and both make Scheffler the clear individual favorite. Where they part is the shape of everything in between.
What Anchors The Board
Three fetched facts define where the individual numbers land.
- Scottie Scheffler Is The Dominant World Number One, And Southwind Fits Him. He leads the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained, won the $10 million FedExCup regular-season bonus as the points leader, and owns a T3 in 2025 and T4 in 2024 at TPC Southwind. One outlet's "winless since January" angle is real but reads as noise next to five runner-ups among eleven top-fives.
- The Second Tier Is Unusually Strong And In Form. Xander Schauffele was solo second last start at the Rocket Classic with four rounds of 67 or better and a T2 at Memphis in 2024; Rory McIlroy returns as the defending Masters champion and a three-time FedExCup winner; Hideki Matsuyama is the 2024 Memphis champion riding the Tour's longest active made-cut streak with a recent run of T14/T14/T3/T5/T7. This is where the panel and the market disagree most.
- Course History Sits With The Accurate Ballstrikers. Viktor Hovland was runner-up at TPC Southwind in 2024 and beat Scheffler in a playoff at the Travelers three starts ago; Justin Thomas is a past winner here; Matt Fitzpatrick posted a T5 in 2024. Precision, not distance, is the fetchable edge at this course.
Here is the short version first, then every model's raw number.
The Board
Market prices are shown as Kalshi cents. The whole 69-contract board's prices sum to about 108 cents, so a "fair" percentage divides each price by that total to strip the exchange's overround; the model blend is the mean of the five seats.
| Outcome | Why it sits here | Market | Fair % | Model blend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Field (Any Other Player) | ~43 unnamed players, incl. defending champ Justin Rose | ~28.5¢ Combined | ~26% | ~17% |
| Scottie Scheffler | Dominant world No. 1, T3/T4 course history | ~16¢ | ~15% | 16.7% |
| Rory McIlroy | Masters champ, three-time FedExCup winner | ~5.3¢ | ~5% | 7.7% |
| Xander Schauffele | Solo 2nd last start, T2 at Memphis in 2024 | ~4.5¢ | ~4% | 6.6% |
| Hideki Matsuyama | 2024 Memphis champ, five straight strong finishes | ~3.1¢ | ~3% | 5.1% |
| Tommy Fleetwood | 54-hole leader here in 2025, elite ballstriker | ~3.7¢ | ~3.4% | 5.0% |
| Sam Burns | Five straight top-20s, 2nd at the U.S. Open | ~3.7¢ | ~3.4% | 4.9% |
| Viktor Hovland | Runner-up at Southwind in 2024, recent playoff win | ~2.4¢ | ~2.2% | 4.0% |
| Cameron Young | Panel's card lacked his form; number is understated, not an edge | ~4¢ | ~3.7% | 1.7% |
These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice.
Every Seat's Number
Every player the market prices at roughly a penny or more is listed below, plus the combined "Field" line for everyone else. The Blend is the simple mean of the five seats. Fair % de-vigs the market price against the board's ~108-cent total; Lean is the blend minus that fair percentage, read as direction and size, not a precise edge.
| Player | Market | Fair % | Opus | Sonnet | GLM | DeepSeek | Kimi | Blend | Lean |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| The Field (Any Other Player) | ~28.5¢ | 26.5 | 17.0 | 14.9 | 13.9 | 19.6 | 19.9 | 17.1% | −9.5 |
| Scottie Scheffler | ~16¢ | 14.9 | 18.5 | 19.0 | 15.5 | 16.5 | 14.0 | 16.7% | +1.8 |
| Rory McIlroy | ~5.3¢ | 4.9 | 8.0 | 8.0 | 7.5 | 7.0 | 8.0 | 7.7% | +2.8 |
| Xander Schauffele | ~4.5¢ | 4.2 | 7.0 | 7.0 | 6.5 | 6.5 | 6.0 | 6.6% | +2.4 |
| Hideki Matsuyama | ~3.1¢ | 2.9 | 5.0 | 5.5 | 5.5 | 5.5 | 4.0 | 5.1% | +2.2 |
| Tommy Fleetwood | ~3.7¢ | 3.4 | 5.0 | 6.0 | 5.0 | 5.0 | 4.0 | 5.0% | +1.6 |
| Sam Burns | ~3.7¢ | 3.4 | 4.5 | 5.5 | 5.0 | 5.5 | 4.0 | 4.9% | +1.5 |
| Ludvig Åberg | ~3¢ | 2.8 | 4.5 | 4.5 | 4.0 | 4.5 | 3.5 | 4.2% | +1.4 |
| Viktor Hovland | ~2.4¢ | 2.2 | 4.0 | 4.0 | 4.5 | 3.5 | 4.0 | 4.0% | +1.8 |
| Collin Morikawa | ~3¢ | 2.8 | 4.0 | 4.0 | 4.0 | 4.0 | 3.0 | 3.8% | +1.0 |
| Matt Fitzpatrick | ~2.9¢ | 2.7 | 2.5 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 3.0 | 2.9% | +0.2 |
| Patrick Cantlay | ~2.4¢ | 2.2 | 2.5 | 2.0 | 3.5 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 2.6% | +0.4 |
| Justin Thomas | ~2.9¢ | 2.7 | 2.0 | 1.8 | 3.0 | 2.5 | 2.5 | 2.4% | −0.3 |
| Russell Henley | ~2.2¢ | 2.0 | 2.0 | 1.8 | 2.5 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.1% | +0.1 |
| Chris Gotterup | ~2¢ | 1.9 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 2.0 | 1.8% | −0.1 |
| Si Woo Kim | ~2.7¢ | 2.5 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 1.7% | −0.8 |
| Cameron Young | ~4¢ | 3.7 | 1.2 | 1.2 | 1.5 | 2.0 | 2.5 | 1.7% | −2.0 |
| J.J. Spaun | ~1.7¢ | 1.6 | 1.2 | 1.2 | 1.5 | 1.0 | 2.0 | 1.4% | −0.2 |
| Wyndham Clark | ~1.3¢ | 1.2 | 1.2 | 1.0 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1.3% | +0.1 |
| Jackson Koivun | ~2.1¢ | 2.0 | 1.0 | 1.3 | 2.0 | 0.5 | 1.5 | 1.3% | −0.7 |
| Tom Kim | ~1.9¢ | 1.8 | 0.8 | 1.0 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1.5 | 1.3% | −0.5 |
| Robert MacIntyre | ~1.4¢ | 1.3 | 1.5 | 1.0 | 1.0 | 0.5 | 1.5 | 1.1% | −0.2 |
| Ben Griffin | ~1.3¢ | 1.2 | 1.0 | 0.8 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 1.5 | 0.9% | −0.3 |
| Maverick McNealy | ~1.3¢ | 1.2 | 1.0 | 0.8 | 0.8 | 0.5 | 1.0 | 0.8% | −0.4 |
| Ryan Gerard | ~1.5¢ | 1.4 | 0.7 | 0.6 | 1.0 | 0.3 | 1.0 | 0.7% | −0.7 |
| Michael Thorbjornsen | ~1.4¢ | 1.3 | 0.6 | 0.6 | 0.8 | 0.3 | 0.8 | 0.6% | −0.7 |
| Michael Brennan | ~1.3¢ | 1.2 | 0.4 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 0.3 | 0.8 | 0.5% | −0.7 |
These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice. "The Field" is a real outcome here: it resolves YES if the winner is any player not individually named above, including defending champion Justin Rose.
A note on the panel. Our standard Model Verdict lineup runs eight seats. On this run three were unavailable: the ChatGPT and Gemini command-line seats are not installed on the machine that produced these verdicts, and Claude Fable hit its usage limit at generation time. This board therefore runs on five models: Claude Opus, Claude Sonnet, GLM, DeepSeek and Kimi. All five scored the field on August 10, 2026 without seeing any prices, working from a fetched, dated summary of the field, the course, and each contender's recent form and Memphis history. They then read one another's anonymized reasoning and revised; four of the five submitted a revision, and the disagreement that survived was over exactly how much probability belongs to the top of the field versus the tail. Every model's number also lands in our back-tested Model Verdict ledger, where past price-blind calls are graded against settled results so the method is measured, not just asserted.
Scottie Scheffler: The Favorite The Whole Panel Endorses
Scheffler is the one place the market and every model agree. The crowd prices him near 16 cents, more than triple the next name, and the panel blends him a shade higher, to about 16.7%. The case is not complicated: he is the dominant world number one, he leads the Tour in Strokes Gained, and his Southwind record (T3 last year, T4 the year before) says the course fits him. What keeps even him under one-in-six is the same thing that anchors the whole board.
Scheffler: dominant world #1 leading Tour in Strokes Gained with elite Southwind fit (T3/T4), but accuracy course and deep no-cut field keep him under a coin flip. — Opus
That is the whole shape of the favorite line: the best player in the world on a course that suits him is still only about a one-in-six shot, because a precision test and 68 other elite players take their cut.
Rory McIlroy And Xander Schauffele: Where The Panel Backs The Top
The panel's clearest disagreement with the market is not on the favorite. It is on the two names right behind him. Kalshi has Rory McIlroy near 5.3 cents and Xander Schauffele near 4.5; the panel blends McIlroy to about 7.7% and Schauffele to about 6.6%, the two biggest positive leans on the board. The reasoning is form and pedigree. Schauffele arrives off a solo second at the Rocket Classic with four rounds of 67 or better and a T2 at this course in 2024, exactly the accurate-ballstriker profile Southwind rewards. McIlroy is the defending Masters champion and a three-time FedExCup winner whose ceiling in a no-cut elite field is, in the models' read, worth more than a nickel. Where the market treats the pair as interchangeable second-tier names, the panel treats proven elite talent in form as underpriced.
Hideki Matsuyama: The Hot Hand With A Trophy Here
If there is a course-history name the market is sleeping on, the panel thinks it is Hideki Matsuyama. He won this event at 17 under in 2024, he owns the Tour's longest active made-cut streak, and he arrives on a run of T14/T14/T3/T5/T7 with most of his recent rounds in the sixties. The market prices him near 3 cents; the panel blends him to about 5.1%, a top-five number on the board. A past champion who is also in the best form of anyone outside the favorites is the kind of profile the models weight up and a flat market tail tends to forget.
Where The Panel Changed Its Mind
The revision round barely touched the favorite and instead fought over the size of the tail. Three arcs tell the story.
Peers uniformly had Scheffler at 16.6–19.0% vs my 12.0%; their emphasis on the steep talent gradient moved me to lift him. — GLM (revised Scheffler 12.0% → 15.5%, and shrank The Field 19.0% → 13.9%)
Two peers pricing the Field ~19-20% surfaced that a 69-man elite no-cut bucket of ~43 players deserves more collective mass than my 14.8%; nudged Field 14.8->17 and shaved Scheffler 19->18.5. Held the strong-favorite core. — Opus
One seat held its ground and explained why, which is exactly what a revision round is supposed to surface:
Held Scheffler ~19% and Field ~15%: peers applied the same field-depth logic I'd already weighed, just calibrated lower. Did pull Viktor Hovland and Collin Morikawa out as individually-priced contenders rather than leaving them in the Field bucket. — Sonnet
The net of it: after reading each other, the seats converged on a strong favorite and split, honestly, on whether the deep field deserves 14% or 20%. The blend lands near 17%, below the market's 26%.
What Would Change The Panel's Mind
These numbers reflect what was known on August 10. Concrete, event-shaped developments that would move them:
- A Withdrawal Or Injury To Scheffler Or McIlroy. The favorites carry the board; either name pulling out redistributes several points straight into the field and the next tier.
- The Wednesday Weather And Tee-Time Draw. A soft, low-scoring setup flattens the field and helps the deep tail; firm, windy conditions widen the gap and push probability back toward the elite ballstrikers, lifting Scheffler, Schauffele and Fitzpatrick.
- Thursday And Friday Leaderboard Position. In a no-cut event the 36-hole leaderboard is the biggest live input; a favorite inside the top five would push his number up hard, while an even leaderboard grows "The Field."
- A Cameron Young Signal. The panel scored Young without his recent-form data, so its sub-2% number is soft. If Young opens strong, expect his price to hold near or above its 4-cent mark; if he starts slow, the low number looks right for a different reason than the panel gave.
More Live Boards From The Same Panel
The same price-blind panel scores the biggest live championship boards on Kalshi. Nearest neighbors while you wait on Memphis:
More live boards from the same panel: World Series 2026 champion (Los Angeles Dodgers lead near 37¢) · Super Bowl 2027 champion (Los Angeles Rams top the board near 16¢) · NBA 2027 champion (Oklahoma City and San Antonio share the top near 23¢). Prices fetched August 10, 2026.
Settlement Timeline
| Marker | Date |
|---|---|
| Round 1 | Thursday, August 13, 2026 |
| Cut | None (all 69 players play four rounds) |
| Final Round And Settlement | Sunday, August 16, 2026 |
| Next Catalyst | BMW Championship, the following week (top 50 advance) |
This page is re-scored whenever the story moves, with the "prices as of" stamp above carrying the evidence. After the market settles, it converts to a graded retrospective that scores every number here against the result.
Dark Horses The Panel Won't Dismiss
The top of this board is strong, so the dark horses are the mid-tier names the models give a real, if modest, number:
- Ludvig Åberg (~3¢, ~4.2% Blend). His last seven rounds were all par or better and his Southwind record is trending the right way (T40 in 2024 to T9 in 2025). Elite young talent on an upswing.
- Sam Burns (~3.7¢, ~4.9% Blend). Five straight top-20s with a runner-up at the U.S. Open, priced like a mid-board name and bumped by every seat toward the top tier.
- Viktor Hovland (~2.4¢, ~4% Blend). He was runner-up here in 2024 and recently beat Scheffler in a playoff at the Travelers; the panel's biggest lean on a sub-3-cent name.
- Patrick Cantlay (~2.4¢, ~2.6% Blend). No headline form line, but described as above-average in all ten key statistical categories, the kind of quietly complete game that contends at a demanding course.
The Traps: Where The Table Can Mislead
Transparency matters more than a clean story, so here is where these numbers would fool you.
- The Cameron Young Number Is A Card Gap, Not An Edge. [Editor's note: the panel scored Young price-blind on a card that did not carry his recent form, so its sub-2% is understated rather than a real read against the market.] Separate reporting this week credits Young with two 2026 wins and closing rounds of 63, 64 and 61, which argues the market's ~4-cent price is closer to right than the panel's number here. We surface the row for transparency, not as a call to fade him.
- The Field Is Still The Single Most Likely Line, Even Shrunk. The panel trims "The Field" well below the market, but at ~17% it is still the most likely single outcome, because 43 elite players with no cut is a lot of live tickets. A named favorite is the story; the field is the base rate.
- The Board Is Thinly Traded. These player contracts show little or no posted volume, and most prices come from candlestick marks rather than a live two-sided book. Treat the exact cents as soft, and the small gaps between mid-board names as noise, not signal.
The DFS Placement Angle: Reading The Top-20 Market
For the PGA DFS crowd, the more useful Kalshi board this week may not be the outright at all. Kalshi also lists a Top-20 finisher market for the same field (KXPGATOP20-FESJC26), and finishing-position contracts are a cleaner read on the placement and leverage that actually decide DFS tournaments than a winner-take-all outright is. As of August 10, that board prices Scottie Scheffler near 81¢ to finish top 20, with Rory McIlroy, Cameron Young, Tommy Fleetwood, Xander Schauffele and Matt Fitzpatrick in the mid-50s, Sam Burns, Ludvig Åberg and Si Woo Kim around 50¢, and the deep field falling into the 30s and below. Read as a floor-versus-ceiling map, that is a quick sort of who the market trusts to cash a lineup slot versus who it treats as a boom-or-bust leverage play. If you are building for the same field, Stokastic's PGA DFS Sims model every player's full finishing distribution, and our PGA DFS picks for today turn that into a slate plan.
How To Read These Prices
The models can tell you where they part from the crowd, but the number in front of you still has to be read in context.
Work an example. Say Scottie Scheffler shows a 16-cent price. Taken at face value that implies about a 16% chance he wins. But this board's prices sum to roughly 108 cents, not 100, because the exchange builds in an overround across 69 contracts. To get a fair, spread-free read you divide each price by that 108-cent total, which pulls Scheffler to about 15% and every other name down a touch. That is the number the panel's blend should actually be compared against, and it is why the "Fair %" column above, not the raw cents, is the honest yardstick. The habit of converting a posted price into its fair value before comparing anything is the whole idea behind turning Kalshi's cents into real odds.
A few honest points before reading too much into any number above:
- Eligibility. Kalshi is a CFTC-regulated event-contract exchange, not a sportsbook. You must be 18 or older and located in an eligible state, and availability varies by state and can change.
- Liquidity And Spread. This is a thinly traded outright board with 69 contracts, and most prices sit on candlestick marks, so getting in or out at your number is not always possible.
- A Moving Week. This is a live tournament that has not started. A withdrawal, weather, or the tee-time draw could change everything, and these estimates reflect only what was known on August 10, 2026. Prices shown on this page refresh as the market moves during tournament week.
- Not Advice. Everything here is analysis for information, not a recommendation to trade. These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice.
The Bottom Line
The market and the models are looking at the same golf tournament and mostly agreeing on the top of it: Scottie Scheffler is the clear favorite, and the FedEx St. Jude Championship is his to lose on a course that fits him. Where they split is the shape underneath. Kalshi spreads a fat 26% across "The Field"; the panel trims that to about 17% and pushes the difference up into Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele and a red-hot Hideki Matsuyama. The read to take is not that any single player is a lock, because even the world number one is only a one-in-six shot here. It is that in a strong, no-cut field, the value lives in the top ten, not the penny tail. If you want the panel's receipts, every call here gets scored on our graded Model Verdict scoreboard, and if you are playing the same field in DFS, our free expert picks and the Kalshi golf picks hub are the next stops.
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Verdicts generated August 10, 2026. Prices as of August 10, 2026. Panel: Claude Opus, Claude Sonnet, GLM, DeepSeek and Kimi, price-blind, after one revision round. These are model estimates, not predictions of fact and not financial advice.
