Xander Schauffele’s latest major win complicates another big accolade
After Xander Schauffele's win, is Scottie Scheffler the Player of the Year favorite?
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Player A has six total wins, including a major, the Players and four Signature Events. Player B has just two wins, but both were majors.
Which one should be the PGA Tour’s 2024 Player of the Year?
As you’ve probably deduced by now, Player A is World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, and Player B is newly-minted two-time major winner Xander Schauffele.
With the Open Championship now in the rearview mirror, the only big-time tournaments left on the Tour schedule (which doesn’t officially count next month’s Olympic tournament) are the trio of FedEx Cup Playoffs events.
This means with just three more Tour events in which we are expected to see both Scheffler and Schauffele in action before the end of the season, their Player of the Year resumes are nearly complete.
The Jack Nicklaus PGA Tour Player of the Year award is determined by a vote of Scheffler and Schauffele’s peers — fellow PGA Tour pros. Last year, Scheffler was given the nod for the second year in a row after winning just two events (neither were majors), beating out Jon Rahm, who won four times, including the Masters.
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But Scheffler had put together one of the most impressive statistical seasons of all time, finishing in the top 12 for 18 consecutive events and collecting more than $21 million in official earnings. Rahm didn’t win again after the Masters and allowed Scheffler to pass him in the FedEx Cup standings and reclaim the top spot in the Official World Golf Rankings.
Complicating the voting process was that Rahm left the PGA Tour for LIV Golf right in the middle of the early December voting period, perhaps souring his chances among remaining PGA Tour members.
This year, Scheffler has outdone his remarkable 2023 by winning six times, the first to do so since Tiger Woods in 2009; he also recorded top-10s in three of the four majors, including winning the Masters for the second time. His other five wins came at the Players Championship and four of the PGA Tour’s $20 million Signature Events.
Meanwhile, outside of his wins at the PGA Championship and this week at Royal Troon, Schuaffele is the fourth player since 1980 to finish top-8 in each of the four majors, while collecting two wins. Outside of the majors, Schauffele has seven other top-10s, including a T2 at the Players, where he led through 54 holes before being passed by Scheffler on Sunday.
But…working in Schauffele’s favor is that since 1990 (the first year of the PGA Tour giving out the award) no player has won two majors in a season and hasn’t been named Player of the Year.
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There now have been seven players to win multiple majors in a season since 1990, beginning with Nick Price in 1994. Woods did it four times between 2000 and 2006 and won the Player of the Year award each season. Harrington, McIlroy, Spieth, Koepka all won POY award during the year in which they won two majors.
Should Schauffele not win again before the end of the season, the most similar comparison between this season and another year where there was a multi-time major winner was in 2008 when Padraig Harrington won both the Open and PGA Championship.
That year, Woods won four times in just six starts, including his final start of the season at the U.S. Open when he memorably defeated Rocco Mediate in a sudden-death playoff following an 18-hole playoff on Monday.
Vijay Singh also won three times that season, along with the season-long FedEx Cup and money list titles, but voters thought Harrington’s two majors trumped both Singh and Woods’ resumes. The PGA Tour did not release vote totals at the time.
While 2024 POY honors are too close to call now, either Scheffler or Schauffele could put the award out of reach with a win or two in the Playoffs.
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