ATLANTA, GEORGIA | Scottie Scheffler crowned his 2024 season in the only proper way it could have ended: with a FedEx Cup title as the PGA Tour’s best player of the year.
The first player since Tiger Woods in 2007 to win seven PGA Tour events in a season, Scheffler didn’t do anything small. He won a major (Masters), near-major (Players), gold medal (Olympics), four signature events (Arnold Palmer Invitational, RBC Heritage, Memorial Tournament and Travelers Championship) and a season-long race (Tour Championship). His wife (Meredith) had their first baby (Bennett), and he even fought the law (Louisville) – and the law lost, of course.
Scheffler was such a dominant player that PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan felt compelled to say last week: “Amazingly, Scottie isn’t the only story.”
Scheffler’s unqualified excellence this season overwhelmed a lot of other narratives. One in particular is the undeniable two-sided nature of the PGA Tour in the signature-event era. Monahan claims the full-field events “had stronger fields,” but the results don’t illustrate that view.
Only eight players collected all 16 signature/significant/playoff/major victories, and only two weren’t ranked in the top 50 when they won (No. 52 Chris Kirk at Sentry and No. 55 Hideki Matsuyama at Genesis Invitational). Of the 22 individual full-field events, only two of the 20 winners were ranked in the top 50 (No. 44 Robert MacIntyre in the Scottish Open and No. 48 Aaron Rai at Wyndham), and MacIntyre climbed into the top 50 only after winning the RBC Canadian a month earlier at No. 76.
Not saying any of that’s bad; it’s just revealing. Some postseason grades for the calendar season:
PLAYER OF THE YEAR: Scottie Scheffler. This really isn’t open for debate. Scheffler’s competition-related earnings in 2024 (including FedEx Cup and Comcast Business Top 10 bonuses) exceed $62 million. Not bad for a new dad who spent a few hours in jail this season.
MAJOR POY: Xander Schauffele. Any other year, his two major victories might have been a slam-dunk POY choice. Wins at the PGA and Open Championships have been a long time coming for a player who always seemed destined to win on the biggest stages. His “arrival” was impressive as Schauffele has put in the work to get better in every aspect of his game. He has emerged as the biggest rival to Scheffler for years to come.
ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Nick Dunlap. With apologies to Matthieu Pavon and his exceptional season that includes winning at Torrey Pines and contending at Augusta and Pinehurst, the 31-year-old Frenchman doesn’t feel very rookie-ish after seven seasons on the Euro tour. Dunlap, 20, started the year as a collegian, became the first amateur to win on tour (The American Express) since Phil Mickelson in 1991 and in July at the Barracuda became the first player to win as an amateur and pro in the same tour season. Had he received FedEx Cup points for his triumph in Palm Springs, he’d have easily qualified for the Tour Championship. I know whose futures I’m buying.
COMEBACK POY: Keegan Bradley. This might seem out of place since Bradley won twice in the previous wraparound season and started 2024 ranked 16th in the world, but his last 12 months have been an emotional rollercoaster. Left off the 2023 Ryder Cup team (RETRO BOGEY: Zach Johnson), the snubbing was painfully chronicled and his disappointment laid bare on the Netflix “Full Swing” series. A year later, he’s the chosen U.S. Ryder Cup captain, a playoff winner after barely advancing, a Presidents Cup candidate and potentially the first RC playing captain since Arnold Palmer in 1963. Talk about a full swing.
AMATEUR OF THE YEAR: Luke Clanton. While it was Dunlap who became the first amateur to win a tour event in more than three decades, he yielded his amateur status three weeks into January. Clanton, the Florida State junior, had one heck of a summer spree mixing with the pros, finishing runner-up at the John Deere, fifth at the Wyndham, T10 at Rocket Mortgage and lipped out sharing low amateur at the U.S. Open. His efforts lifted him to No. 1 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking and earned him 14 points in the PGA Tour University Accelerated program, leaving him needing just six more points to earn a full PGA Tour card when he’s ready to transition.
CROSSOVER OF THE YEAR: Bryson DeChambeau. He played only the four majors, but his win at the U.S. Open, runner-up at the PGA and early lead before a T6 at the Masters contributed to the most engaging competition of the season. His $6.993 million would have ranked ninth on the PGA Tour money list. The 1,412.5 FedEx Cup points he didn’t receive in those three events would have ranked 21st at the end of the regular season. Get a deal done already.
TOUR EVENT OF THE YEAR: Players Championship. Outside of the majors (PGA and U.S. Open in particular), the most compelling drama came in the tour’s flagship event. Three players – Brian Harman, Xander Schauffele and Wyndham Clark – came to the 72nd green with a chance to catch Scheffler’s clubhouse mark. Harman and Clark had the best looks at birdie – and Clark’s was halfway in the cup before cruelly horseshoeing out. That left Scheffler as the first repeat winner in the event’s 50-year history.
BIRDIE: Robert MacIntyre. There were six multiple tour winners this season. The Scotsman from Oban, despite suffering homesickness on the PGA Tour, pulled off an impressive double by winning the Canadian and Scottish Opens – the first with his father carrying his bag and the second with the hopes of a thirsty home nation on his own shoulders. He can afford to commute now.
BOGEY: Transaction Committee. Whatever (or whomever?) is the holdup in negotiations to forge some kind of deal to reunify the top of the men’s game, it is depriving golf fans of what they really want to see: the best players competing more often than just four times a year. The stalemate on getting a deal done seems increasingly likely to drive Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund elsewhere to invest its wealth in golf – potentially even turning the European tour from strategic ally into a legit rival of the PGA Tour with deeper links to LIV. That may actually be good for golf but not the PGA Tour.
BIRDIE: Money list. When the PGA Tour established its FedEx Cup points system in 2007, it banished the money list from being a determining factor for qualifying to play the Tour Championship and all the perks (such as a Masters invite) that came along with that. Turns out money earned is a pretty effective measuring stick. Brian Harman ($5.138 million, 20th) is the only player in the top 30 on the money list who didn’t qualify for East Lake, nudged out by Justin Thomas ($4.475 million, 32nd) for the 30th spot.
BOGEY: Ratings. In general, TV viewership across the golf board has cratered – even for the tour’s marquee signature events. While there are myriad reasons for the decline, one the tour seems unwilling to consider is limited-field events just aren’t as interesting even when many of the participants are household names. The best golf always is when there’s more depth to the story and the competition has higher stakes than just a big pile of guaranteed money. See the majors.
BIRDIE: DP World Tour 10. The first class of Euro circuit players to take up PGA Tour cards proved to be stronger on average than Korn Ferry Tour grads. Two of them (MacIntyre and Pavon) combined to win three tour events and reached East Lake, and Victor Perez qualified for the playoffs. Three more (Ryo Hisatsune, Sami Välimäki and Ryan Fox) are inside the top 125 and in position to retain their tour cards. One (Adrian Meronk) left for LIV. The 30 KFT grads also notched three wins (Grayson Murray, Jake Knapp and Chris Gotterup) but placed nobody in the Tour Championship, three among the top 70 and 14 in the top 125 – a far lower percentage of return.
RIP: Grayson Murray. Just four months after his dramatic victory in the Sony Open in Hawaii capped his career renaissance and earned him his first trip to the Masters, Murray went home to Florida and took his own life after withdrawing during the second round at Colonial in Texas. It was a tragic ending for a talented golfer and tortured soul, reinforcing the truth that we never really know what people are going through in life even when it might seem as if they’re on top of the world as successful athletes. Be nice to people and reach out if you think they need a little care.
BOGEY: Tiger Woods. He didn’t complete a single regular tour event all season yet he was rewarded with the biggest chunk of the tour’s Strategic Sports Group $1.5 billion investment windfall, got a permanent seat on the Policy Board and a lifetime invitation to signature events. Unless he ever plans to take advantage of those playing opportunities to compete more often and get his game in shape, he’ll never be successful just cherry-picking majors. He’s not giving PGA Tour Enterprises any return on the lucrative investment it has made in him. Everybody needs to step up their game, including Woods and the sore laurels he’s resting on.
BIRDIE: Old-ish man music. On the eve of the Tour Championship, Adam Scott went to the Atlanta Braves’ Truist Park for the Green Day concert. “I actually went for the Smashing Pumpkins more, but I do like Green Day, as well. Smashing Pumpkins were my favorite band for a long time,” the 44-year-old Australian said, citing the influence of Nirvana and the grunge genre on his musical tastes. Meanwhile, when FanDuel influencer Ali McCann asked 37-year-old Shane Lowry whom he’d like to have a beer with, his answer of the reunited Oasis drew a confused stare. “You don’t know who Oasis are?” a gobsmacked Lowry said. “Oh, my god. You’re obviously way younger than me. This is like the biggest news ever. You need to look them up. She doesn’t know Oasis. Blasphemy!”
BIRDIE: Jack Nicklaus. The Golden Bear still has some clout in golf’s inner circles. He took one for the team in adjusting the week of his Memorial to accommodate the tour’s signature event plan. But a man who routinely avoided playing the week before any of his 18 major victories didn’t like his beloved event leading directly into the U.S. Open. He said so, and the Memorial is the only tournament that will move back to its usual time slot, a week earlier in 2025.
WD? Royal Bank of Canada. RBC extended contracts for one more year to sponsor the Canadian Open and the Heritage, a $20 million signature event at Harbour Town. But it is not very happy with the rift in men’s golf siphoning away talent from the tournaments it pays handsomely to put on. The tour can tout its signing of Truist to replace Wells Fargo, but if RBC walks in 2026, it won’t be easy to find companies willing to pony up almost $30 million to put their names on events with weak ratings and fields diminished by attrition.
BOGEY: PGA Tour stylebook. In its first-round notes from the Tour Championship, this absurdity after Scheffler shot the lowest score by one stroke over five others: “Becomes the first player to hold a lead of seven strokes or more after 18 holes of a TOUR event on record (1983-present).” That’s the most ridiculous “stat” since the tour’s revisionist historians cited Sam Snead winning the 1945 Nissan Open. On the pettiness front, the PGA Tour U Accelerated standings list any college awards for which players earn points by name – Nicklaus, Hogan, Haskins – except for the “D-I Outstanding Freshman Award,” which is better known as the Phil Mickelson Award. Get over it, PVB HQ.
BOGEY: Winning. Sixteen of the 30 players to reach the Tour Championship did not win a tournament this season – and one of them (Collin Morikawa) threatened to win the whole thing and the $25 million bonus. There were 14 PGA Tour winners who did not make it to East Lake. I guess that’s what the season-opening Sentry at Kapalua is for, but it still seems like there should be a bit more premium on actually taking home the trophies.
BOGEY: Heat index. Every player who made it to East Lake mentioned fatigue setting in at the conclusion of a particularly grueling summer schedule in which the cadence of big events doesn’t leave much room for rest and recovery. Perhaps two of the permanent playoff sites being pegged to August dates, in Memphis and Atlanta, isn’t such a great idea. The Tour Championship already competes with the start of football season, so why not build in an off week before the finale and finish on a Monday in mid-September when things cool down a bit?