It’d be easy to say that Scottie Scheffler had 25 million reasons to strive for victory number seven of 2024 when he arrived at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta earlier last week, but when you’ve already earned over $37 million in tournament winnings and bonuses, what’s another 25?
Ok, the money is nice, and even somebody as grounded as Scheffler won’t say no to it, but the victory brought with it a place alongside Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh as the only players to have ever recorded seven victories in a PGA Tour season in the last half-century.
Miller’s feat came back in 1974, Watson’s in 1980, and Singh’s in 2004, while Woods has done it on no fewer than four occasions, the first coming in 1999, swiftly followed by 2000, then 2006 and 2007. And when you find yourself in lofty company like that, you’ve plenty reason to be proud of yourself.
While he may not have taken the fewest actual strokes to complete his 72 holes – that honour goes to Collin Morikawa who had 262 with Sahith Theegala taking 263 and Scheffler 264, the whole point of the staggered start is to give the season’s best performer the cushion and had they begun on equal footing, the pressure dynamic would’ve been markedly different and it’d take a brave man to bet against Scheffler coming down the stretch if he was a shot or two behind.
The top-ranked player in the game has now held that honour for 68 straight weeks having dethroned Jon Rahm at the 2023 PGA Championship and even Xander Schauffele’s two-major season doesn’t have him anywhere close to taking the top spot.
For context, world number nine Patrick Cantlay is closer to Schauffele than Schauffele is to Scheffler, and Malaysian amateur Hari Hezri, ranked 4610 is closer to Rory McIlroy in third than McIlroy is to Scheffler in first.
That’s dominance on a level not seen since Woods back in 2007, and should he retain top spot for another 13 weeks, he’ll surpass Nick Faldo, and another 28 weeks will see Greg Norman’s peak stretch overtaken.
That’ll only leave Woods’ 264- and record 281-week streaks to aim for, and while it’s a stretch to see anybody ever realistically challenging those, it’s hard to imagine anybody knocking him off his perch before those are the only streaks left to conquer.
There is a lot of water under the bridge since, but were it not for the calamitous events in Louisville back in May where Scheffler’s Friday morning warmup session was conducted in a jail cell, we could be talking about an even more impressive season. And those seven PGA Tour victories don’t even include the Olympic Gold Medal that he earned in Paris, and if you ask any of the 59 players he beat at Le Golf National, only a major victory can top that achievement.
He’ll tee it up again in just over three weeks when he again dons the Stars and Stripes in the Presidents Cup, and he’ll likely take a well-earned rest, but the only question that remains is how far up the Major Championship totem pole he can go.
Given his level of performance over three years now, two Green Jackets seem like a rather paltry return, particularly when you consider that Schauffele tied his major haul over the course of two months this year.
Schauffele, Morrikawa, Bryson DeChambeau, Justin Thomas and Dustin Johnson each have two major wins, while Jordan Spieth has three, Rory McIlroy has four and Brooks Koepka has five. Of these contemporaries, you’d have to think that Scheffler is the man most likely to end his career with the most.
But stranger things have happened. When McIlroy racked up his fourth win in near darkness at Valhalla back in 2014, anybody predicting that he’d still be stuck on four a decade later would’ve found themselves in a straitjacket, but yet here we are.
But Scheffler’s game feels different. His ceiling is comparable to McIlroy’s, but his floor is much, much higher, and with a dozen major chances over the next three seasons, it’s hard not to see him bagging at least a couple more.
One thing is certain, however, and that’s that he’s raised the bar and if you’re going to beat him when he’s playing well, then it’s going to take something pretty special.
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