Dallas’ Scottie Scheffler caps historically lucrative season with FedEx Cup Championship

The most momentous seven months of Scottie Scheffler’s 28-year life needed no affirmation.
Dominance is dominance. Nothing that happened Sunday at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club, in the final round of the PGA Tour season, would have changed the fact that Scheffler is unequivocally the world’s best golfer.
Scheffler nevertheless punctuated the best PGA Tour season in at least 15 years with a $25 million exclamation point, winning the Tour Championship and season-long FedEx Cup title by four shots over Collin Morikawa.
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Dallas resident, Highland Park and University of Texas product Scheffler’s seven victories this season are the most since Tiger Woods’ seven wins in 2007.
Not to diminish that Woods season, but this Year of Scheffler also included a gold medal in the Paris Olympics in July and the birth of Scottie and Meredith’s first child, Bennett, on May 8.
This marked the third straight year that Scheffler entered the Tour Championship in the No. 1 position. He finished second the previous two years, so in that sense Scheffler did have extra incentive Sunday beyond the $25 million bonus at stake.
He’s been ranked No. 1 in the world for 68 straight weeks and 102 overall, but he knew that winning the PGA Tour’s version of the postseason was a hole in his career résumé.
“It’s like the Cowboys have had great regular seasons the last few years and left me heartbroken in the playoffs,” Scheffler told reporters on the eve of the Tour Championship. “But golf is a different sport.”
Pro golf, most of all, is about winning major championships. Scheffler did that this season, too, by winning his second Masters title, along with wins in the Players Championship, the Palmer Invitational, RBC Heritage, Memorial, Travelers and Tour Championship.
How does one put this season into perspective? There have been more dominant years, including North Texan Byron Nelson’s 18 wins in 1945 and in modern times the 9-win seasons by Woods (2000) and Vijay Singh (2004), but Scheffler’s season easily is the most lucrative in Tour history.
His $29,228,357 in official money this season broke his own PGA Tour record of $21 million that he set last season. And that doesn’t even include the $25 million he earned Sunday because that counts as a bonus, not season money.
“By any measure,” PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan said during the trophy ceremony, “your year is simply stunning.”
As the FedEx Cup points leader, Scheffler began the Tour Championship with a two-shot lead. At one point in the first round he fell into a first-place tie with Xander Schauffele, but he never trailed this week.
He carried a five-shot lead into Sunday and extended the advantage to seven shots. After he made bogeys on Nos. 7 and 8, Scheffler’s advantage suddenly was down to two shots, but he birdied the next three holes and was never threatened afterward.
So often this season, Scheffler has seemed immune to pressure and adversity. That was most evident at the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky., where before the second round he was arrested and briefly jailed after what he called the Big Misunderstanding.
As he attempted to drive onto the tournament grounds in his courtesy vehicle, he failed to stop when a police officer ordered him to do so. Scheffler was unaware that the traffic snarl around the Valhalla Club was due to a pedestrian being struck and killed by a shuttle bus.
Released later that morning, just in time to shoot a second-round 66, Scheffler’s name remained in the headlines for nearly two weeks, until a felony charge of assaulting a police officer with his vehicle and three misdemeanor charges were dropped.
As Scheffler noted Sunday in his postround interview on NBC, the support from fans never wavered. If anything they embraced him even more so, starting with that second round of the PGA Championship.
“After the stuff that happened in Louisville, I didn’t really know exactly what was going to happen when I showed up at the first tee,” he said. “The reception I got when I showed up to the tee was something I’ll remember for a long time. The players, too, have been supporting me the whole way.”
Scheffler certainly has picked an opportune time, financially, to become the world’s best golfer, with Tour purses skyrocketing.
At last week’s BMW championship, Scheffler quietly moved to No. 3 in career PGA Tour earnings with $71,793,586, trailing only Woods ($120,999,166) and Rory McIlroy ($90,989,166).
Remember, he’s only 28, theoretically entering the prime of his career, already with 13 Tour wins.
Entering this week, there remained some debate about whether Scheffler or Schauffele would win Tour Player of the Year honors. Schauffele, after all, won this year’s PGA Championship and British Open.
Consider now, though, that Scheffler’s seven victories this season were five more than anyone else on the Tour — plus that gold medal performance in Paris, where he rallied with a final-round 64.
Scheffler that day shed tears as the national anthem played. There were no apparent tears on Sunday, but it was an emotional scene as Scheffler putted out on the 18th hole, walked off arm in arm with caddie Ted Scott, then raised his arms in triumph as the crowd cheered.
The TV camera panned to the crowd and Scheffler’s parents, Scott and Diane, then to Meredith, who carried Bennett down to the green and placed him in Scottie’s arms.
Scottie lifted Bennett in the air, a fittingly wonderful image in the Year of Scheffler.
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