We have one event left in the 2013-2014 PGA Tour season, and the eighth FedEx Cup champion will be crowned by week’s end.

Twenty-nine players (Dustin Johnson isn’t competing) will vie for the FedEx Cup crown at East Lake, but who should we install as the few favorites to accomplish the feat?

Well, back in its earliest iterations, the FedEx Cup Playoffs heavily favored those at the top of the standings going into the last event.

A points reset prior to the Tour Championship was implemented in 2009, and it’s done the job of allowing players from farther back to capture the grand prize. While the 2009, 2012 and 2013 FedEx Cup champions were all in the top-five before East Lake, winner Jim Furyk was a measly 11th with one event to play in 2010. And Bill Haas jumped from 25th to 1st in the standings with his defining win in the 2012 finale.

This is to say that installing favorites just by copying and pasting the current top-five in the standings is probably unwise. A higher initial place definitely helps, but with the points reset, performance at East Lake becomes monumentally important.

Combining that with other factors, we’ve discovered the five most likely candidates for the 2014 Playoffs crown (current FedEx Cup standing in parentheses):

Billy Horschel (2)

Apologies here to FedEx Cup leader Chris Kirk (who really is a much better player than people think), but among the top in the standings, I like Horschel’s chances at the crown more.

Why?

The East Lake course itself isn’t much of a factor in this case. In recent times, the most important components to success on the layout have been great driving and short game play (around the green). Of the eight winners and runners-up since 2010, six of them have been extraordinary players off the tee. And from East Lake’s FedEx Cup inception in 2007, every single winner possessed a well-above average to elite short game, until Henrik Stenson last year.

Horschel is a fantastic driver of the golf ball, but remains one of the game’s most putrid short game artists. Kirk has never gotten much from his driving, but he’s historically owned a fabulous short game.

So it comes down to a different factor: recent form. Yes, Kirk won two weeks ago at the Deutsche Bank Championship, but followed it up with a T36 at the BMW Championship. After his stellar opening months of 2013-2014, Kirk’s season has been rather stagnant, with the win at TPC Boston more of an outlier than anything.

Horschel has struggled mightily this season, but his win at Cherry Hills appears less fluky, as he was potentially a mishit six-iron away from winning the week before.

The last time Horschel was playing this well, he went on a four-week tear, placing top-10 in all events and producing a victory and two other near wins.

Yes a shallow past history, but there is precedent and I think it manifests itself this week. Horschel’s great play should continue, and a high finish might be enough to get him the crown.

Rory McIlroy (4)

OK, well duh on this one. McIlroy is easily the game’s best player right now, which means that he’s most likely to dominate a field in any given week.

Really the only reason I wouldn’t pick McIlroy would be every other factor conspiring against him.

And that is not the case.

He’s actually an OK short game player, and we don’t have to tell you just how good he is with the big dog in his hands. East Lake, then, actually profiles pretty well for him.

Yes, McIlroy is not in his summer form, but that level of golf was ridiculous. Even in his reduced fall state, McIlroy is just fine. Six of his last 11 rounds have been in the 60s and if it wasn’t for an awful opening day at the Barclays, he would have all top-10 finishes in the 2014 Playoffs.

Really there are a lot of good signs for McIlroy, and add that to his current standing and immense talent, there’s no way a favorites list omits him.

Jim Furyk (7)

Whatever his Sunday struggles—and zero victories in his last seven 54-hole leads is something to behold—the 44-year-old continues to match his game with some of the best.

Lost in all of the hoopla over Furyk’s final-round foibles is the fact that the ageless American has produced an extraordinary 2014. In 20 events, Furyk has top-tenned in half of them, garnered three runner-up finishes and raked in more than $5 million.

He’s possibly been the best golfer on the planet without a win this year.

Ah yes, the specter of his victory drought, winless since 2010, looms large. Furyk can mathematically win the FedEx Cup with a Tour Championship runner-up; a second-place showing pushes him to 2,700 points, just 60 short of Haas’ total in 2011.

But, more than likely, that won’t be enough. Furyk will have to win.

Despite his proclivity for the silver medal of late, the 44-year-old can be victorious at East Lake. For one, he has done it before, in 2010 when he captured the FedEx Cup crown as well. His results at the Tour Championship since have been rather middling, but the course sets up nicely for his excellent driving and premier short-game play.

Yeah, yeah, I get it 0-for-7 of late. Streaks like this can be broken at any time though, especially from a player who’s historically been a decent closer aside from this relatively small sample in his decades-long career. (And bad luck is a factor too. As Jason Sobel notes, four of these seven failures occurred even with a sub-70 final round. You can’t blame Furyk for running into buzzsaws like Tim Clark.)

Furyk has silently been a force this year. Expect him to contend this week, and if he’s close on Sunday, there’s no guarantee that he wilts.

Matt Kuchar (8)

You can only use logic so much in a sport that seems to pride itself in enraging prognosticators. That’s where Matt Kuchar steps in.

Really there isn’t that much pointing to Kuch as FedEx Cup Champion by Sunday evening. His all-around game allows him to contend almost anywhere but is not especially adept for East Lake. His record at the course backs that up—a single top-10 in four starts. And his form has been extremely stagnant following his whirlwind opening four months of 2014.

The forecast from the important factors is not sunny for Kuchar.

Sometimes though, that doesn’t matter, as Haas proved in 2011. Kuchar tends not to go too long without a high-level performance (whether that be a win or a close call), and we’re now almost five months removed from his last one of those.

He’s due, then.

Kuchar has also started to make it a habit of winning important events that aren’t majors. Maybe the Tour Championship is the next one on that list, with the FedEx Cup winner’s haul to boot.

Call it a hunch, or outright conjecture, whatever. The 2014 finale might signal the further rise of Kuuuuuuuch.

Sergio Garcia (13)

You can look at Garcia’s 2014 in two ways.

In one sense, he’s played arguably some of the best golf of his career. The Spaniard is second in the PGA Tour’s Strokes Gained: Total category, and the 34-year-old has put that insane form toward five TOP-THREES and nine top-tens in 15 PGA Tour starts.

And when you add his half-dozen totals from the European Tour, you can tack on two more top-threes, including a victory.

On the other hand, nobody (not even Jim Furyk) has extracted less from his play than Garcia. Every player in the top-seven of Strokes Gained: Total has at least one PGA Tour win this season—except Garcia. You thought Jim Furyk’s three runner-ups in 2014 were tough to swallow? Including his European Tour data, Garcia has four, and two more third place finishes to add to the pile.

Even more sadly, Garcia played well enough to win the Open Championship and the World Golf Championship at Firestone only to run into Rory McIlroy’s world-beater persona.

OK, this is starting to sound like a woe-is-me tale Garcia was famous for in the past. I do have a point.

Garcia’s form has been consistently phenomenal in 2014. His first two Playoff performances were underwhelming, but he got back on track with a T4 at Cherry Hills.

A poor showing at East Lake seems improbable at this point. A putrid result there would mean three such performances in four starts, which is extremely out of character for 2014 Sergio Garcia.

We can pretty confidently predict that Garcia will be in the thick of it on Sunday. With the Spaniard’s numerous close calls less a series of choke jobs and more the work of luck and circumstance, the law of averages suggests that Garcia’s next foray near the top of the leaderboard will net him a victory.

And with a win at the Tour Championship, Garcia might need a little help, but he would have a great shot at the FedEx Cup Trophy.