Editor’s note: “In Case You Missed It” is a GGP+ feature that highlights a story from Global Golf Post‘s Monday magazine.
ST. SIMONS ISLAND, GEORGIA | In this gentle corner of the world where life seems to move at the leisurely pace of the breakers on a soft beach afternoon, holiday decorations blend with the live oaks and ocean views.
Red ribbon is wrapped around the white columns of an office building in the quaint business district, wreaths adorn doors, and twinkling lights are like glitter in the darkness.
It’s an ideal place to put a bow on another PGA Tour season, which concluded Sunday at the RSM Classic at Sea Island’s camera-friendly Seaside Course. Tom Brady and Caitlin Clark made cameos in the Wednesday pro-am, adding a dash of starshine before the tour’s final workweek wound down.
Before the tournament began, Chris Kirk marveled at how another year had rolled by, this one starting with his unlikely victory in the Sentry shortly after the New Year’s Eve fireworks had quieted.
“I hadn’t been to Kapalua in a while, so I was like, Oh, we’ll just kind of go and get our feet wet a little bit and see how the swing’s feeling. Then end up shooting 29-under and winning. I guess that’s golf in a nutshell for you right there,” Kirk said.
Golf. Go figure.
There is no such thing as a typical year on the PGA Tour anymore. The LIV Golf-induced fracture still exists though there are increasing hints that a truce may be reached sooner rather than later, raising hopes of at least a peaceful co-existence and, perhaps, a full reconciliation.
It’s a curious time for the PGA Tour, which reinvented itself again this year by returning to a calendar-year schedule (a long-overdue change) and by embracing the signature-event model with its various pots of gold scattered from January through the end of August.
There are more changes coming in 2026 when only the top 100 in the FedEx Cup points race will retain their full playing privileges, but that’s down the line. While it’s a big deal to the rank-and-file, Ludvig Åberg may have inadvertently opened a door to how the top players see their job status when he conceded that he knew nothing about the changes that were adopted last week because, it stands to reason, they won’t affect him.
That’s what the waterfall of money has done to the PGA Tour. It has provided generational wealth for some – Scottie Scheffler’s brilliance earned him more than $62 million on tour this year – while creating a disconnect with some fans weary of the seemingly endless chatter about how the millions are being dispersed.
Despite that, the tour continued to do what it does best: create compelling stories that are built on the competition but are defined by the players’ individual stories.
There may have been no better image of what winning means than seeing Rafael Campos, staring at the loss of his tour card, wiping the tears away after winning the Butterfield Bermuda Championship two weeks ago, genuinely changing his life in the same week that he and his wife welcomed their first child.
“I know how people are going to view my year, and I view my year similarly, but at the same time, I still have to remember I won four times and I won a [third straight] Race to Dubai.” – Rory McIlroy
Last week, Campos sat in the media room doing Zoom interviews, and his joy was contagious, whether he was telling his story in English or Spanish.
Jake Knapp, Austin Eckroat and Akshay Bhatia had their own variations on the Campos’ story with their victories, authoring stories that demonstrated that the so-called regular tour events have their own distinct values.
Nick Dunlap became the first amateur in 33 years to win a tour event and, six months later, proved it was no fluke by winning again.
There were dazzling moments. Wyndham Clark’s 60 on Saturday at Pebble Beach may have been the round of the year. Bryson DeChambeau’s fairway bunker shot that sealed his U.S. Open victory at Pinehurst will be replayed by tourists for years. Keegan Bradley winning the BMW Championship had a storybook quality to it.
There was also the wrenching sadness of Grayson Murray’s suicide, 4½ months after he won the Sony Open in Hawaii.
Fairly or not, it was another year in which Rory McIlroy was judged more by what he did not do than by what he did. He won twice on the PGA Tour (of course, he won at Quail Hollow again) and twice on the DP World Tour, but another year without a major-championship victory weighed heavily, especially the gut-wrenching way he let the U.S. Open slip his grasp.
“I know how people are going to view my year, and I view my year similarly, but at the same time, I still have to remember I won four times and I won a [third straight] Race to Dubai,” McIlroy said. “I accumulated a lot of big finishes and big performances, and the two guys that had better years than me have had career years.”
Ultimately, it’s a year that will be remembered for the singular greatness of Scottie Scheffler, whose achievements relegated Xander Schauffele’s two-major-championship season to 1A on the best-of-’24 list.
Officially, Scheffler won seven tour events, but he rightly counts his gold medal from the Olympics as an eighth victory.
He went back-to-back at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship, where he managed to beat the world while needing to get his back stretched between holes.
One month later, he went back-to-back again at the Masters and the RBC Heritage, demonstrating the virtuosity of his talent by winning at Augusta National and Harbour Town, golf’s equivalent to playing the Beatles and Beethoven.
Scheffler won the FedEx Cup, and his reaction to his bizarre arrest at the PGA Championship won him the hearts of fans whose heads he had already convinced of his brilliance.
While Schauffele redefined his career with victories in the PGA Championship and the Open Championship, Scheffler seems to be in the process of defining an era in professional golf.
It’s time to put a season-ending bow on the year, wrapped in holiday lights and scented with Sea Island salt air.
If you feel like raising a Thanksgiving toast to the season that was, you won’t be the only one.