The Tour Championship has crowned a champion every year since 1987, first as the Nabisco Championship and now as the finale of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy share the record with three wins apiece, and Woods still owns the scoring record — a 23-under 257 in 2007 that no one has approached.
One important caveat before the list: winning scores from 2019 through 2024 are not comparable to any other year. Under the starting-strokes format used in that span, the FedEx Cup points leader began the week at 10 under par before hitting a shot. Those totals are marked below.
Multiple Winners and Records
| Tiger Woods | Three titles (1999, 2007, 2018), including the record 257 in 2007 when he won the inaugural FedEx Cup by eight strokes. |
| Rory McIlroy | Three titles (2016, 2019, 2022), the only player to win under both the pre-2019 format and the starting-strokes era. |
| Phil Mickelson | Two titles, nine years apart (2000 and 2009). |
| Wire-to-wire winners | Tom Watson (1987), Curtis Strange (1988), Henrik Stenson (2013), Patrick Cantlay (2021) and Scottie Scheffler (2024). |
Why the Winning Scores Jump Around
Three different eras are mixed into that list. From 1987 to 2006 the field was the top 30 money winners and the event was pure stroke play in early November. From 2007 the FedEx Cup Playoffs took over, and the tournament winner and the season champion were often two different people. Then from 2019 to 2024, starting strokes were applied: the points leader began at 10 under, and scores reflected that head start rather than four rounds of golf.
Starting strokes were scrapped ahead of the 2025 event, so Tommy Fleetwood’s title came in a conventional 72-hole stroke-play tournament where all 30 players began at even par. That is the format still in use, which means winning scores from 2025 forward are directly comparable to the pre-2019 years and not to the six seasons in between. Our breakdown of how the Tour Championship format works now covers the change in detail, and the official history is kept by the PGA Tour.
The Bottom Line
Tom Watson won the first one in 1987 and Tommy Fleetwood won the most recent in 2025. Woods and McIlroy lead the way with three apiece, and Woods’ 23-under 257 from 2007 remains the standard. Just remember that six of the winners on this list played a different game than everyone else did.