Scottie Scheffler knows that although the FedExCup race is described as a “season-long competition,” it can be reduced to one tournament, one week and one result.
The Tour Championship.
That’s right: Despite being the first PGA Tour player since 2009 to win six or more times in a season, and despite being the favorite for Player of the Year after winning the Green Jacket and Olympic gold medal in the same year, Scheffler can go into the Tour’s grand finale with a two-stroke lead – at most.
“I think it’s silly,” he said Wednesday at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, where he enters the week with a more than 1,900-point lead in the standings. “You can’t call it a season race and have it come down to a tournament. Hypothetically, we get to East Lake and my neck is burning and it’s not healing like it did at The Players – I’m turning 30.”th in the FedExCup because I had to withdraw from the last tournament? Is this really the race of the entire season? No. It is what it is.”
And Scheffler hasn’t changed his stance just because he’s in that golden position now; he’s been the top seed in each of the last two years heading into the season finale. Last year he called the Tour Championship a made-for-TV event that was “not the best indicator” of the year’s best player.
“It’s a fun tournament,” Scheffler said Wednesday. “I don’t really consider it a season race, as it’s called. But you have to find a way to find a balance between a good TV product and a season race. Right now, I don’t know exactly what the ratings are or anything like that, but I know you can’t really call it a season race if it comes down to a stroke play tournament on the same golf course every year.”
McIlroy says the current playoff format adds extra excitement because Scheffler cannot walk away with the title.
Scheffler is still hoping for his first FedExCup title. He finished second in 2022 after losing the lead with a final-round 73. Last year, exhausted at the end of a long season that eventually saw him named the Tour’s Player of the Year, he shot just 1 under par in four rounds and finished in sixth place.
Over the past three years, he has played a total of 13 under par there – a far cry from Xander Schauffele, for example, who played 43 under par at East Lake over the same period and now goes into the postseason as the number 2 seed.
East Lake was recently restored under the direction of architect Andrew Green, and the finished product is due to go on display in two weeks.
“I’m pretty excited that they changed course a little bit,” Scheffler said. “Maybe it will give me a new feeling there.”
