Rory McIlroy is the only absence from this week’s 70-man FedEx St. Jude Championship, the PGA Tour’s playoff opener at TPC Southwind in Memphis.

McIlroy, at second in points behind Scottie Scheffler, is already guaranteed to qualify for both the BMW Championship and Tour Championship. And though the top 30 players in points after the BMW are paid out of the FedExCup bonus pool, McIlroy has a nearly 900,000-point cushion on No. 3 Sepp Straka while he’s over 1.3 million points shy of Scheffler. In other words, McIlroy skipping one playoff event shouldn’t affect his standing too much, if at all. Plus, he already collected $10 million in bonuses on Sunday.

Points also are meaningless once players arrive at East Lake, which has been reverted to traditional, 30-man stroke play.

But is this wh

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