Scottie Scheffler earned another comparison with Tiger Woods on Monday, joining him as the only players to win PGA Tour player of the year at least four times in a row.
Scheffler made an easy case to pick up another Jack Nicklaus Award. His tour-leading six victories were twice as many as anyone else and included two majors, the PGA Championship and the British Open, to leave him on the cusp of a career Grand Slam.
He became the first player since Woods in 2000 to lead the PGA Tour with the lowest scoring average in each of the four rounds.
Scheffler was on the ballot with Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Ben Griffin. The award is a vote of the players, though the PGA Tour did not release what percentage of the votes Scheffler received or how many players voted.
Woods is an 11-time winner of the award and won five straight times from 1999 through 2003.
McIlroy had a big year in his own right, nothing grander than his playoff victory in the Masters for the final leg of the career Grand Slam and a green jacket he had been pursuing for 15 years. He also added titles at Pebble Beach and The Players Championship.
Scheffler, however, has been putting on a master class of consistency since breaking through with his first PGA Tour title in 2022. Along with 19 victories in his last 80 events on the PGA Tour — that doesn’t include his Olympic gold medal last year in Paris — Scheffler has finished among the top three in just over 46 per cent of his PGA Tour starts.
This season alone, Scheffler led the PGA Tour in 17 statistical categories, ranging from his accuracy from tee-to-green, how often he followed a bogey with a birdie or better (36 per cent) and official earnings, which this year topped $27 million US.
And he effectively gave McIlroy and everyone else a head start. Scheffler sliced his right hand during Christmas last year while using a wine glass to cut ravioli. He missed nearly two months and didn’t really find his groove until a week before the Masters when he was runner-up in Houston.
That began an astonishing stretch in which Scheffler didn’t finish worse than a tie for eighth the rest of the year. He played his final six PGA Tour events without a round over par, and he had a stretch of 21 consecutive rounds in the 60s.
He also won his hometown CJ Cup Byron Nelson in the Dallas area by matching the PGA Tour record for 72 holes at 253, an eight-shot victory.
Neither of his two major titles was particularly close. He won the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow by five shots and he won the British Open at Royal Portrush by four shots.
Aldrich Potgieter was voted PGA Tour rookie of the year. He was among five rookies who won this year, but the South African was the only player to win a tournament that offered full FedEx Cup points and qualify for the post-season.
