The final event of the 2024 PGA Tour season, the Tour Championship at East Lake Golf Club, was emblematic of the season as a whole. Everyone in the field attempted to catch Scottie Scheffler, and for a brief moment, a few even thought they might. Still, in the end, Scheffler slammed the door on their dreams, waltzed to yet another victory and claimed a $25 million bonus out of the $100 million FedExCup payout pool to go along with it.
Scheffler on Sunday became the first golfer since Tiger Woods in 2007 to win seven PGA Tour events in a single season. Only those two and Vijay Singh have won 7+ tournaments in the same campaign since 1983. Scheffler's scoring average of the 68 over the course of the season marked the lowest in Tour history.
It started going sideways for Scheffler, who took a five-shot lead into the Tour Championship finale, on the seventh hole when he nearly roped a drive out of bounds. The ball nestled up next to a tree, and Scheffler made bogey from there. Another bogey followed on the par-4 eighth hole when he shanked a bunker shot sideways and backwards from where he was aiming. Collin Morikawa birdied that same hole to cut the lead to two as everybody watching leaned forward in anticipation.
Then Scheffler birdied three straight holes to put a wrap on the 2024 FedEx Cup. He concluded his day with a 4-under 67 to finish at 30 under for the tournament and claim his first FedEx Cup trophy. The win brings his season-long total money earned to an astounding $62,228,357.
"I was a bit frustrated. I had a pretty simple up and down there," Scheffler said of the shank. "Outside of the ball being on the side slope, it's pretty basic. ... It definitely happened at the wrong time, [but] from there on out, I did some pretty nice stuff."
Scheffler claiming the FedEx Cup after already winning a Masters green jacket and Olympic gold medal -- along with his multiple victories in signature events -- is an extraordinary feat, but the way in which he came through Sunday deserves further perspective.
He reached a moment on Sunday when memories of blowing a six-shot lead in the final round of the 2022 Tour Championship could have crept into his mind and affected his play; instead, he went the other way, blowing open the tournament and destroying the rest of the best golfers in the world.
Scheffler is great because he's a huge talent who works extremely hard, but now he's bordering on legendary with 15 wins in the last 32 months and $125 million earned. He exists at a level mentally that few have ever reached.
That was the story of his season. Over and again, Scheffler spoke about how much pride he took in his ability to stay focused and reset mentally. It's one thing to say as much but quite another to hit a shank with $25 million on the line and get back after it immediately. That's what Scheffler achieved, and few endings have more appropriately summed up the overall narrative season than the conclusion of the Tour Championship.
Winning the FedEx Cup is not Scheffler's most notable achievement in a career full of them, but it is the one most emblematic of the player Scheffler has become and why he is far and away the best golfer in the world. Grade: A+
Here are the rest of our grades for the 2024 Tour Championship.
2. Collin Morikawa (-26): It was such a great effort from Morikawa, who seemed incredibly freed up from the back nine in his first round onward. There is a strange argument to make that Morikawa had the best season of his career despite not officially winning a PGA Tour event. He did end up winning an OWGR event by taking the fewest number of strokes at the Tour Championship, but he did not claim an official PGA Tour event because of the starting stroke differential between him and Scheffler to open the tournament. Regardless, I'm bullish on him in 2025 to have some win luck swing back in his favor. Grade: A
3. Sahith Theegala (-24): What a wild game. Theegala called a penalty on himself Saturday in the third round that cost him two strokes, and ultimately, $2.5 million. He would have finished tied for second alongside Morikawa with those two shots back and would have won the OWGR event. That's an unfortunate part of the deal, but it would not have deterred Theegala's decision. He was lights out on the weekend playing his last 27 holes in 13 under par. He's also going to be electric at the Presidents Cup. Grade: A
T4. Xander Schauffele (-19): The clear-cut second-best player in 2024 did not play like that at the Tour Championship until the end. Schauffele was the only golfer who could, with a straight face, say that he was even close to Scheffler's universe in 2024. Unfortunately, he stumbled a bit over the first few days at a golf course where he has historically played spectacularly. After starting two back of Scheffler, Schauffele finished 11 back of him on Sunday. Three birdies at the end of his final round, though, made up for it a bit as he earned $3 million more than he would have with three pars. That included a wild chip in at the final hole to complete the birdie streak. Grade: B+
T9. Rory McIlroy (-16): It was a weird final stretch of the season for the normally consistent McIlroy. He was quite volatile after the U.S. Open and did not do much at this event until a final round 66 on Sunday. It was still a nice year but not what McIlroy expects. It speaks to his outrageous ceiling that finishing T9 in the FedEx Cup is his second worst finish of the last seven years. "It's been a long season, and I'm going to just have to think about trying to build in a few extra breaks here and there next year and going forward because I felt like I hit a bit of a wall sort of post-U.S. Open, and still feel a little bit of that hangover," he said.Grade: B
T14. Justin Thomas (-14): Jumped from nearly last to middle of the pack with a good Tour Championship. His performance probably gets him onto the Presidents Cup team, and it was representative of the grind-it-out season he put together. Nothing amazing, but he's slowly building back into the player he's been for the majority of his PGA Tour career. In a somewhat under-the-radar way, too. Grade: B+
T21. Keegan Bradley (-8): It's not a bad showing given the spot Bradley was in a few weeks ago when he narrowly made it to the BMW Championship. However, given that he started the week at 6 under and could only manage to get to 8 under by the end of the week, that's nevertheless a huge disappointment. To provide better context, Bradley started in the spot that receives $6 million and ended in the spot that receives less than $700,000. That's a tough fall after such an amazing week last week at the BMW Championship. Grade: B
