WILMINGTON, Del. — Justin Thomas is among the few who have experience at Wilmington Country Club.

He was 20, still officially in college at Alabama, when he played in the 2013 Palmer Cup. Thomas didn’t recall much when he returned for the BMW Championship, the second stop in the FedEx Cup playoffs, except for the shape of the hole when he played a practice round.

He doesn’t remember his 2-and-1 win over Sebastian Cappelen of Denmark in Sunday singles or the team score, only that it was a big win.

Limited experience is still more than most at a pivotal juncture in the PGA Tour postseason.

The PGA Tour has never been to Delaware, though the BMW Championship was only 30 minutes away in 2018 at Aronimink outside Philadelphia, and last year was an hour down the road at Caves Valley outside Baltimore.

Still, no one has ever played this course when every shot counts and $15 million is at stake. Patrick Cantlay is the defending champion and doesn’t feel like he needs a deep study of Wilmington.

“This golf course is definitely just like last year, extremely distance-biased,” Cantlay said. “You’ve got to hit it as far as you can and hit a lot of fairways. This course is a little narrower than last year, and I think most times you see when guys win they just got hot with the putter, which I did last year.”

There won’t be a repeat of last year, when Cantlay never looked like he would win until a birdie on the sixth playoff hole against Bryson DeChambeau before a highly charged crowd. That’s mainly because DeChambeau is among more than a dozen players who have signed on with Saudi-funded LIV Golf and have been suspended or resigned.

The main goal for players this week is to be among the top 30 in FedEx Cup points who advance to the Tour Championship, where they can chase the FedEx Cup and its $18 million prize.

Reaching the Tour Championship typically comes with an invitation to the Masters, U.S. Open and British Open. For those already locked into the top 30, the higher up the points list they are, the better their odds at the Tour Championship.

For players like Jon Rahm, the objective hasn’t changed.

“We are here to win the tournament. Pretty sure if I win the tournament, it takes care of itself,” Rahm said.

He can point to Will Zalatoris winning last week, and going from No. 12 to the top spot.

“I’m not going to be making a decision on the golf course coming down the stretch on the back nine thinking about my FedEx Cup position,” Rahm said. “I will be thinking about my leaderboard position and if I can win or not.”

Wilmington Country Club, which counts President Joe Biden among its members, is long and elevated, with enough room off the tee to encourage driver even on the shorter holes. Dry weather could help create firm greens, the best defense on any course.

Rory McIlroy already likes what he sees, and he has seen plenty. McIlroy missed the cut last week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. Instead of heading home to hot and muggy Florida, he came straight to Delaware and has been practicing at Wilmington every day since Saturday, including 18 holes of the pro-am Wednesday.

“It’s a golf course that’s a little more up my alley compared to last week in Memphis,” McIlroy said. “I was a little rusty last week, as well, but a lot more drivers off the tee, a lot of room off the tee, a lot more scope to hit driver. Length is an advantage here, where in Memphis it’s not really. Just my sort of golf course that I feel like I can excel on.

“It’s nice to get back out and prepare and get to know a new golf course, get a little bit of a head start on everyone else.”

PLAYERS-ONLY MEETING: Tiger Woods showed up for a private meeting of top PGA Tour players dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved plaid shirt. By the sound of his impact, he might as well have been wearing a Sunday red shirt.

“I think it’s pretty apparent that whenever we all get in the room, there’s an alpha in there,” Rory McIlroy said Wednesday. “And it’s not me.”

Exactly what came out of the Tuesday night meeting at Hotel Du Pont is more of a mystery, even down to the number of players in attendance. The purpose was to unify, not only against the threat of a rival league funded by Saudi money, but shoring up any weaknesses in the tour.

Chief among the topics was a future of bigger money and a formula that gets the best players on tour competing against each other more often.

Otherwise, details were scarce. They emerged from the players-only meeting with another form of unity: tight lips.

“I think I’d be pretty unhappy if I saw one of those guys from last night just blabbering to you guys what we talked about,” Xander Schauffele. “That would be really frowned upon, and you probably wouldn’t get invited back to the meeting. There’s a little bit of a code there, I’d say.”

The meeting came at a volatile time. Even the start of the lucrative FedEx Cup playoffs was interrupted by more LIV Golf developments – The Daily Telegraph reported British Open champion Cameron Smith will join the rebel series after the FedEx Cup, and a federal judge denied a request by three LIV Golf players who wanted to play in the tour’s postseason.

“One thing that came out of it, which I think was the purpose, is all the top players on this tour are in agreement and alignment of where we should go going forward, and that was awesome,” McIlroy said.

So where should it go?

“I don’t think that’s for a public forum right now,” McIlroy said. “I think that’s between the players and between the executives at the tour to sort of manage a way forward.”

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