World No.1 Scottie Scheffler has been the best golfer on the planet and the favorite to win the FedEx Cup all season long. Through two rounds at the Tour Championship that hasn’t changed, and the rest of the PGA Tour’s best are starting to sound the alarm about their chances to stop him… if not readying their white flags for waving.
To recap how we got here, Scheffler pulled off an historic stretch of golf in the first half of 2024, winning six PGA Tour events including his second Masters title. If not for his bizarre arrest at the PGA Championship, he may have won more.
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It seemed like no other player could touch him, and the FedEx Cup was his to lose. But then Xander Schauffele went and won two majors, the PGA and more recently the Open, to suddenly make a run at the Player of the Year and FedEx Cup titles.
Would Scheffler once again fail to win the Cup after an early-season blitz, as has happened in the past?
Scheffler shut the door on that theory quickly with a dramatic gold-medal win at the Olympics in August. But still, as the FedEx Cup Playoffs began, some people wondered whether Schauffele could still win the Cup, and Player of the Year, with a playoff charge.
Heading into this week’s Tour Championship, Scheffler was still in first, which earned him a starting score of 10 under. Beating the world’s best player when also giving him strokes seemed like a tall task for any player, Schauffele included.
After Scheffler blitzed East Lake in the opening round for the best round of the day to increase his lead from two shots to seven, all hope seemed to have vanished for the other players in the field.
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Even after his lead shrunk slightly on Friday, the rest of the best sounded doubtful that anyone could catch him.
“He’s the best golfer on the planet. He’s really good with leads,” pro Sam Burns said after the second round at East Lake. “It’s not a great thing for us.”
Burns started the Tour Championship at four under, six shots behind Scheffler. Despite impressive rounds of 67 and 68 to open the tournament, he finds himself 10 shots back at the halfway point.
Burns was honest about the chances of Scheffler loosening his grip on the lead.
“I am not expecting him to come back in the slightest. Somebody is going to have to go chase him down,” Burns said Friday. “I think if you drive the ball well around here, get yourself in position enough and you have a good day with the irons and make some putts, I think a low score is to be had. When you get the ball out of position on this golf course, especially with firmer greens, it makes it pretty tough.”
Wyndham Clark, the 2023 U.S. Open champion, provided a similar perspective, saying, “It’s going to be very tough to catch up with him. He’d have to not play his best and I’d have to play unbelievable.”
Collin Morikawa actually beat Scheffler on Friday by three shots. But he’s still four shots off the pace heading into Round 3. When asked if it helped to be in the final pairing with Scheffler, Morikawa said only “a little bit.”
“He’s such a good player that you just know he’s going to keep going low and making birdies,” Morikawa said Friday evening. “I saw that firsthand. I’ve seen it for years.”
Schauffele, the only man with a chance to steal POY honors from the World No. 1, also made it clear that the tournament is in Scottie’s hands.
“It’s really up to him, to be honest. I have to play out of my *beep* to sniff,” Schauffele joked. “Being two back and then shooting one under yesterday and him shooting low round of the day, it’s just not the start I needed. A sense of urgency today to try and pick some up.”
But it’s not all bad news for the many players trying to chase down Scheffler at East Lake. The 2024 FedEx winner only gets $25 million of the $100 million bonus pool, which means there is still $75 million up for grabs, even if a win seems like less and less of a possibility, as Clark acknowledged.
“There’s still a lot of great things to finishing second, third or fourth, or fifth even.”
