For all that Scottie Scheffler has achieved this season – and it may be easier to recount what he hasn’t done – another season begins Thursday at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, Tennessee, with the three-week FedEx Cup playoff sprint.
Contrived in 2007 to create a big-bang finish to a golf season that previously tended to fade away, the FedEx Cup playoffs have delivered on their purpose.
Being the FedEx Cup champion may not come with the gravitas of winning a major championship, but it has grown into one of the sport’s aspirational achievements.
Rory McIlroy and Tiger Woods have won multiple FedEx Cups, and players having career runs including Jordan Spieth, Henrik Stenson and Patrick Cantlay have claimed the big silver trophy and the accompanying millions. In other years, Bill Haas, Billy Horschel and Brandt Snedeker have turned good seasons into special ones by peaking in August.
The next three weeks – the Memphis stop will be followed by the BMW Championship at Castle Pines Golf Club outside Denver and the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta – may not have the one-and-done urgency of the NFL playoffs, but it is the last time the tour’s top players will tee it up together until January (aside from next month’s Presidents Cup).
It seems strange that even if Scheffler were to win the first two playoff events, he will go to the Tour Championship with only a two-stroke advantage in the weighted scoring system used in the finale which determines the FedEx Cup champion.
All Scheffler has done so far is win six events, including the Masters, the Players Championship and four signature events, and accumulate 14 top-10 finishes in 16 starts, as well as winning the Olympic gold medal two weeks ago.
But playoffs being playoffs, Scheffler will have to close the deal in Atlanta to win the $25 million first prize. If you’re keeping count at home, Scheffler already has won $28,148,691 this year, breaking the season earnings mark that he set a year ago.
It may not be the equivalent of the New York Giants ending the New England Patriots’ perfect season in 2007, but it’s the PGA Tour’s version of playoff stakes.
Scheffler has come to East Lake as the leader in the past two years and watched as McIlroy in 2022 and Viktor Hovland last year wound up holding the trophy. Though Scheffler faded early at East Lake last year, he led McIlroy by six entering the final round in 2022 (he led him by 11 at one point on Thursday) and endured one of his most disappointing Sundays, shooting 73 to McIlroy’s closing 66.
It may not be the equivalent of the New York Giants ending the New England Patriots’ perfect season in 2007, but it’s the PGA Tour’s version of playoff stakes.
Considering the summer Xander Schauffele has had and his success at East Lake – he has shot par or better in his 28 competitive rounds there, won the 2017 Tour Championship and has tied for the lowest score twice since the weighted scoring went into effect in 2019 – the prospect of a Scheffler-Schauffele duel in Atlanta’s late-summer heat seems likely.
That is getting ahead of things, however. This week, 70 players are in Memphis and only the top 50 will advance to Colorado next week.
Getting to Castle Pines comes with its own rewards. The top 50 after this week automatically qualify for the signature events next year, which is a huge incentive given the $20 million purses and limited fields.
Jordan Spieth sits at No. 63 and with surgery to his left wrist likely this fall, playing his way into the top 50 would set him up nicely for 2025, not that he would likely have trouble landing sponsor exemptions into signature events.
Mackenzie Hughes (No. 48), Will Zalatoris (No. 49) and Jake Knapp (No. 50) can advance with solid weeks. Hughes also will be pushing to secure a spot on the International team for next month’s Presidents Cup in his native Canada.
The most confounding player may be Hovland who, a year ago, was the hottest player in the game. Now, he finds himself 57th on the points list this year with just one top-10 finish (T3 at the PGA Championship) in May.
He soared working with coach Joe Mayo in 2023, but they parted ways earlier this year. When Hovland’s downturn continued, they reunited, but Hovland is still searching for what he lost.
“It’s just not that fun to play golf when you don’t know where the ball is going,” Hovland said Tuesday.
“I do pride myself in trying to make the best out of it, but it gets to a point where you kind of lose that belief; you just see a shot, and that’s not good enough.
“I can try to grind my hardest. I can try to chip in from there. But you do that too often, too many times during the course of a round or a tournament, it’s too much to overcome, and I feel like it’s a waste of time for me to be playing golf if that’s where I’m at. I’d rather be off the golf course and work on it, trying to figure out why I’m doing those things.”
Another flat week and Hovland will have plenty of downtime. One very good week, however, and the playoff landscape can change.
That’s the idea.