Unlike the majority, Rory McIlroy feels the Tour Championship starting stroke format wasn't that bad. The ace golfer recently said that he was of the opinion that the leader should have had some advantage coming into the final week.McIlroy is in East Lake, Georgia, for the Tour Championship 2025, which tees off on Thursday, August 21. He is currently second in the FedEx Cup standings and is looking for his fourth title here.On Tuesday, August 19, during the pre-event press conference at East Lake, Rory McIlroy shared his opinion on the now-dismissed format of the Tour Championship."I'm maybe part of the minority," he said, "I didn't hate the starting strokes. I thought that the player that played the best during the course of the season should have had an advantage coming in here.""But the majority of people just didn't like the starting strokes. Whether it were players or fans. I was on the PAC when we were trying to go through that, and really it was just a way to try to simplify the advantage that the top players were going to get over the course of the week instead of Steve Sands doing calculations on a white board."In defense of starting strokes, he cited Scottie Scheffler's example, stating that a 2-stroke advantage was hardly enough for what he had done this season. He added that besides the current format, match play was also on the cards. While it was put on hold for now, it might be brought back in the future."I think it's just hard for the players to reconcile that we play stroke play for every week of the year," he continued. "But then the season-ending tournament is going to be decided by match play. I think it was just hard for the players to get their heads around that."I don't know, maybe that will be on the table again, who knows. Yeah, look, it's a 72-hole stroke-play event, and that's what we play week in and week out. That's what's going to determine the winner, I don't know if it's the best format, but it's the one that we have for this week," he added.When will Rory McIlroy tee off at the Tour Championship 2025, Round 1?Rory McIlroy is paired alongside FedEx Cup leader Scottie Scheffler for the first round of the Tour Championship 2025. The duo will be the last group in action on Thursday, August 21, and will tee off at 2 p.m. ET from the first hole at East Lake. The opening round will begin at 11:16 a.m. ET, and Chris Gotterup and Akshay Bhatia will tee off as the first group of the day.Rory McIlroy is a three-time champion at the Tour Championship as well as the FedEx Cup playoff champion. His first win came in 2016 against Kevin Chappell and Ryan Moore in a playoff. He went on to win again in 2019, and three years later, he overtook Tiger Woods as the most successful player here.