Scottie Scheffler: “I've lived almost a full lifetime in this one year.”

In 2022 and 2023, Scottie Scheffler left the Tour Championship disappointed. Both times he arrived leading in FedEx points. Both times, he had a two-stroke advantage when the tournament started. And both times, he gave up the advantage, losing first to Rory McIlroy, then to Viktor Hovland. In 2024, he was determined not to let that happen.

So, on Sunday, when he was handed the FedEx Cup as a symbol of his victory at the Tour Championship, he had a real sense of accomplishment.

“I've been leading the (FedEx) points list for a long time, so to come in here with a little lead is nice to play the way I did and be able to finish it off the right way,” he told the media after the victory. “You're starting the tournament ahead of people. You should win the tournament if I'm starting ahead of people. That's how I feel. So maybe the last couple years I've put too much pressure on myself to perform.”

Maybe Scottie Scheffler had to wait for a new golf course to get this one done. Or maybe he just got outplayed the two previous years. Whatever.

This time Scottie Scheffler got it right.

Although he still wasn’t satisfied.

“I felt like I was doing a lot of stuff well and I wasn't getting a ton out of it,” he said about his play early. “I had started with a lead and that's why I was still in the lead, only because I started with it.”

(More on that later.)

Scheffler even shanked a shot out of a bunker on the 8th hole in the final round. His caddie, Ted Scott, gave him an earful between the 8th green and the 9th tee, what Scheffler described as a pep talk.  

“I don't think a day goes by that he is not giving me some pretty decent advice or giving me a good laugh when I need it,” Scheffler said about his caddie.

This time, after two bogeys in a row at the 7th and 8th, Scott reminded Scheffler that they were still in control of the tournament, that he was playing really well, and that they needed to get back to work. 

“That actual specific bunker shot, for some reason I need to figure out why, but I shank it a lot more often than I should when I'm on a side slope like that,” he noted about his tendency to hit the sideways unmentionable on occasion.

He said that because it was a bunker shot, it didn’t bleed over into the rest of his game.

“If it was a normal wedge shot from the middle of the fairway, then yeah, I think it probably would have been a bit more challenging to overcome,” he admitted.

Sure, he has the occasional bad shot. But there’s a lot to love about Scheffler’s game.

Many analysts point to improved putting as the key to Scheffler’s season.  But his entire year was a how-to for getting and staying at the top in golf.  He was 1st in scoring, 1st in putts per round, 1st in greens in regulation, and 20th in driving accuracy. His scoring average for the season is 68.01. For the Tour Championship week alone, he was third in strokes gained putting.  However, he was also first in greens in regulation, first in driving distance, and first in strokes gained off the tee. This is not shabby golf!

Now to Scheffler’s comments on having the lead:

As the top point-getter in the FedEx Cup race, he was assigned a score of 10-under par at the beginning of the Tour Championship, two shots ahead of Xander Schauffele, who began at 8-under par. The other 28 players were also assigned score values from 7-under par to even par.   

“If it was a regular tournament, I think I would have been a couple strokes behind but would have been right in the tournament,” he said about his starting place and finishing place.

“So, two shots is really not very much, but I think that is part of the challenge to the format. It's a lot different mentally. It's something that I never would have thought that I needed to prepare for,” he explained.

That was part of what made it exhausting for him. He said it made the tournament feel longer than it was. 

In the end, with his 10-shot scoring bonus and his 20-under par actual strokes, Scheffler’s score became 30-under, giving him the victory. Yes, it’s screwy, but it’s the system that was chosen. It’s the same one that gave Rory McIlroy and Viktor Hovland their victories at the Tour Championship in 2022 and 2023.

As the PGA Tour explained in their online story about the winning score:

“After opening at 10-under with FedExCup Starting Strokes, Scheffler posted respective scores of 65, 66, 66 and 67 for 20-under across 72 holes. With all combined scores determining the leaderboard, his final score was 30-under, four strokes lower than runner-up Collin Morikawa.” 

Without assigning strokes to the players according to their finish in the FedEx Cup, the result would be that Collin Morikawa was first with a score of 262, Xander Schauffele was second with a score of 263, and Scottie Scheffler was third with a score of 264. 

While there are critics of this system, it is much easier to follow than the previous ones where every score change by every golfer affected the score of every other golfer on the course. That was the norm for several years, and it was just nuts to compute and figure out on the fly.

This system, flawed or not, is something every golfer and every viewer can understand quickly by glancing at the leaderboard.