A small field with no cut changes how the week reads. Everyone here has come through a qualifying series, recent form is comparable, and no stragglers stretch the scoreboard, so the gap between first and last is narrower than at a full field event. That makes place markets, three ball betting and head to head match ups more interesting than usual, and it keeps much of the field mathematically alive deep into the closing round. Scoring tends to be low and bunched, so one run of birdies can reorder the leaderboard quickly.
The TOUR Championship is the closing event of the PGA Tour's season long playoff series, contested by a reduced field of players who qualified in the preceding playoff events. It is played over four rounds of stroke play with no cut, and it settles the season title.
With so few players, everyone tees off in one block, pairings are set by position, and the leaders go out last with the whole board in front of them. That visibility changes decisions on the closing holes, where a player chasing has to take on flags that a player protecting a lead will avoid. Nobody hides in a big field either: four rounds of comparable conditions leave little excuse, and a single loose round is hard to bury. A tie after regulation is decided on extra holes.