Scottie Scheffler might be the runaway favorite for PGA Tour Player of the Year, but does the race for PGA Tour Rookie of the Year have the potential to be a lopsided vote too? We’ll find out next month.
The Tour recently released its nominees for its 2024 Jack Nicklaus Award (player of the year) and Arnold Palmer Award (rookie of the year), and the trio of players put up for the top prize are no surprise: Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele and Rory McIlroy.
Scheffler, the World No. 1, won seven of his 19 starts, which included victories at the Masters, Players, RBC Heritage, the Memorial and Tour Championship. (He also won gold at the Olympics.) Scheffler’s looking to become the first player to win the Jack Nicklaus Award three straight years since Tiger Woods won in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
Scheffler’s seven-win season has made him the betting favorite over Schauffele, who won the PGA Championship and Open Championship to claim the first two major titles of his career.
McIlroy, who has won this award three times before, won the Zurich Classic and Truist Championship in 2024.
Like Scheffler with player of the year, Nick Dunlap is the front-runner for the rookie award. The 20-year-old won twice last season, which included his victory at The American Express when he was still an amateur. That victory — the first by an amateur since Phil Mickelson in 1991 — earned him a PGA Tour membership. Dunlap then turned pro, and when he won six months later at the Barracuda Championship, he became the first player in Tour history to win as an amateur and professional in the same season.
The other rookie-of-the-year nominees are Max Greyserman, Jake Knapp and Matthieu Pavon. Greyserman had three runner-up finishes in 26 starts. Knapp won the Mexico Open at Vidanta; and Pavon won the Farmers Insurance Open. Pavon, who finished 17th in the FedEx Cup standings, was also the only rookie to qualify for the Tour Championship.
Both awards are voted on by Tour players who played in at least 15 events during the 2024 season. Voting closes next week, and winners will be announced by the end of the year.
