When the PGA Tour gets around to releasing its 2025 schedule, perhaps it should reclassify its special events to call them Scottie Scheffler signature events.
The last of the year’s eight signature events concluded Sunday at the Travelers Championship and, aside from the smoke bomb-toting protesters who disrupted play on the 72nd hole, it ended like three others did: with Scheffler posing with the trophy after beating his buddy Tom Kim on the first playoff hole.
Quantifying Scheffler’s success – we still haven’t reached the Fourth of July – is beginning to resemble how accountants must feel when April 15 approaches as the pile grows bigger and bigger.
Scheffler won four of the eight signature events, the ones designed to get the best players on the PGA Tour together.
In fact, Scheffler had a 57 percent winning rate in the signature events because he did not play the Wells Fargo Championship as he and wife, Meredith, had become parents just a few days earlier.
Scheffler won the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the RBC Heritage, the Memorial and the Travelers Championship, played on four distinctly different styles of course. The other two victories on his ’24 resume happen to be the Players Championship and the Masters.
That would be a brilliant career for most players. That’s four months for Scheffler.
If you’re wondering, in the three signature events Scheffler did not win this year, he finished T5, T6 and T10 in the Sentry, AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the Genesis Invitational, respectively.
“He’s just going to play well. So, it’s almost just like you’re not even worried about it.” – Tom Kim
Scheffler is so far ahead in the FedEx Cup points race that Xander Schauffele, whose year is deserving of more praise than it is getting, could win the next four events including the Open Championship and still would be trailing Scheffler.
If there is an injustice in all of this, it’s that no matter how good Scheffler is from here on out – he’s playing the Open Championship, the Olympics and three playoff events – he still will start just two strokes ahead at the playoff finale at East Lake. At this point, a 10-stroke lead seems more appropriate.
After losing to Scheffler in a playoff Sunday, Tom Kim offered a glimpse into what it’s like trying to beat his fellow Dallas resident.
“You don’t need to worry about him, because he’s going to play well,” Kim said. “He’s just going to play well. So, it’s almost just like you’re not even worried about it.”
For all of his ball-striking brilliance, Scheffler has a temperament that may be as critical to his success as his unique fundamentals. There are players who are driven by goals and analytics.
Justin Thomas, for instance, keeps his annual goals on his phone so he can refer to them when necessary. Others do deep dives into whatever Trackman or FlightScope tells them.
Scheffler gets what he needs from those things, but he takes a more holistic approach. When someone foolishly asked Scheffler onSunday whether he needs to win the Open Championship to “validate his season,” he said this:
“I don’t really define myself by my wins or by my losses, and so I do my best to compete and have the right attitude,” Scheffler said. “Going into the Open Championship, I don’t need to feel any sort of validation or anything like that. It’s been a tremendous year, and I’m grateful to have some wins, and I’m looking forward to going out and competing and playing in the Open Championship, playing in the Olympics, and then playing the playoffs as well.”
Not to diminish the Rocket Mortgage Classic this week or the John Deere Classic next week, but this feels like a subtle pause in the PGA Tour schedule. The three-week run of the Memorial, the U.S. Open and the Travelers was a draining push of big events that was a byproduct of the condensed calendar-year schedule.
In their second year, the signature events succeeded in getting the top players together, and the list of winners bears out their depth of quality. Aside from Scheffler’s four wins, Chris Kirk (Sentry), Wyndham Clark (Pebble Beach), Hideki Matsuyama (Genesis) and Rory McIlroy (Wells Fargo) won signature events.
Finding the right cadence for signature events remains a work in progress. Stacking them immediately before or after major championships created blocks of big events and allowed the tour to configure the schedule to allow those outside the signature events to play their way in.
The intent of the signature events was to answer LIV Golf’s big purses with $20 million, limited-field tournaments while assuring the tour’s best would tee it up together more often. It has worked, though it has created the sense of a two-tier tour.
The first three signature events – Sentry, Pebble Beach and Genesis – essentially were standalone tournaments. If RBC decides to continue its commitment, the RBC Heritage isn’t likely to move from the week after the Masters.
The new event at Quail Hollow – it’s expected to be formally announced in the coming weeks – likely will remain the week before the PGA Championship, which worked nicely this year.
Jack Nicklaus made no secret of his displeasure with having the Memorial played the week before the U.S. Open, and he has already gotten it moved back into its traditional spot two weeks before the Open next year. That would ease the three-event squeeze that just ended, assuming that Travelers remains, which becomes easier without the Olympics taking a week away from the tour schedule in 2025.
The intent of the signature events was to answer LIV Golf’s big purses with $20 million, limited-field tournaments while assuring the tour’s best would tee it up together more often. It has worked, though it has created the sense of a two-tier tour.
It’s the new tour model, and at least until a possible resolution is negotiated with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and LIV Golf, the signature events appear to be here to stay. Why else give Tiger Woods a lifetime exemption into them?
They have defined this season which, thanks to Scottie Scheffler, is beginning to look like one for the ages.