ATLANTA, GEORGIA | There have been years in which the result of the FedEx Cup playoffs A) confirmed the obvious; B) delivered a surprise (we’re looking at you Bill Haas and Brandt Snedeker); and C) came and went without doing much more than leaving those on site at East Lake in a puddle of sweat at the end while a lucky few counted their new millions.
This time, the penultimate edition of the FedEx Cup playoffs as we know them offers a $10 million prize to the winner of the 72-hole, start-from-scratch season finale while likely determining the PGA Tour’s Player of the Year.
The wrinkle is that Scottie Scheffler, the four-time player of the year gunning for his fifth straight honor, is not a shoo-in to add the recognition to his vast set of collectibles.
It seemed inevitable a week ago – Scheffler excels in delivering inevitability – but then Wyndham Clark won the BMW Championship last week and forced a discussion on the merits of his season as compared to Scheffler’s typically excellent campaign.
The outcome is subjective – the tour players vote on it – which means there is an element of popularity contest to it and, as Clark fully understands, probably means he needs to win the Tour Championship to snap Scheffler’s streak.
For argument’s sake, there are five players who have distinguished themselves enough this year to be considered – Scheffler, Clark, Cameron Young, Chris Gotterup and Matt Fitzpatrick.
Rory McIlroy, by his own admission, isn’t in the Player of the Year discussion despite repeating as Masters champion, even if he wins a fourth FedEx Cup.
“It’s sort of all to play for it [this] week,” McIlroy said Sunday evening in St. Louis after Clark’s victory.
The reality is Gotterup and Fitzpatrick, who have three victories apiece (that counts Fitzpatrick’s team title with brother Alex in New Orleans) don’t have enough beyond their victories on their résumés this year.
Consider this: Scheffler has 12 top-five finishes this season. Clark has 19 top-fives in his career. But Scheffler didn’t win a major this year, though he had three top-four finishes in majors. Nevertheless, this is where perception and reality intersect.
Young won a signature event (the Cadillac Championship) and the Players Championship and came within a bit of Ryan Fox magic of winning the Open Championship but he’s finished outside the top 35 in six of his last eight starts, taking a firehose to any momentum he had earlier.
Which brings us to Scheffler and Clark.
Here’s a snapshot of the dueling résumés:
Scheffler has two wins, five runner-up finishes and 12 top-five finishes this year, he leads in scoring average by a wide margin and leads strokes gained total, strokes gained tee to green, greens in regulation, scrambling, birdie average and a grocery basket full of other statistical categories.
Consider this: Scheffler has 12 top-five finishes this season. Clark has 19 top-fives in his career.
But Scheffler didn’t win a major this year, though he had three top-four finishes in majors. Nevertheless, this is where perception and reality intersect.
“Obviously Scottie’s the best player in the world right now,” Clark said last week after winning at Bellerive.
Scheffler is relentless, even at the BMW Championship, where he was dealing with hand, foot and mouth disease he picked up from one of his children.
“I think over the course of my career, I feel like one thing I’m most proud of is my consistency week in and week out. I think that’s something that I take a lot of pride in. It’s not easy to show up every single week and play the way that I play and play with the intensity that I play [with] and that I bring to each and every tournament. That’s something I’m really very proud of,” Scheffler said.
“If I’m showing up for a tournament, I’m not showing up for any other reason other than to do my best and give myself a chance to win that golf tournament. This is a year where I’ve given myself some opportunities, but I’ve also battled really hard to get myself back into some reasonable finishes at tournaments.”
Clark was essentially off the radar when the tour rolled into Augusta in April, ranked 78th in the world and still dealing with the residue of his petulant behavior last year.
Since then, however, Clark has transformed his season while gracefully handling the fan noise directed at him, understanding he is not the most popular player on tour largely because of things he did in the past. He’s taken accountability and there is a sense that he’s gaining ground in the court of public opinion.
His golf, built on power and putting that improved after he switched to a center-shafted Ping putter in the spring, has oftentimes been brilliant. He has three wins and two other top-five finishes since May.
He battled through losing large 54-hole leads at the both the U.S. Open and BMW Championship but he prevailed in both, holding off Scheffler at Shinnecock Hills and McIlroy in St. Louis. Clark himself didn’t expect to be in a player of the year discussion until recently.
“Honestly, I didn’t even think about it coming off such a terrible year [in 2025]. Didn’t even think about Player of the Year. I was more just wanting to get back into contention, wanting to make it to East Lake. And then I win, and win a major and then it’s like, OK, now I want to make the Presidents Cup team,” said Clark, who clinched a spot on the U.S. Presidents Cup roster next month at Medinah.
One more big week for Clark and he may wind up winning more than he ever imagined.