Scottie Scheffler caps dominant year with FedEx Cup title and $25m payday
The inevitable became official Sunday afternoon at East Lake Golf Club: Scottie Scheffler won the Tour Championship and captured the 2024 FedEx Cup, the first season-long championship of his PGA Tour career.
Scheffler finished a whopping 30-under-par, beating Collin Morikawa by four strokes after a thrilling round of 4-under 67. The world No. 1 added a FedEx Cup to his growing resume and took home the accompanying $25 million bonus.
Scheffler overcame two bogeys in a row by making three birdies on holes 9-11. A 15-foot eagle putt on the par-5 14th hole was the final highlight of Scheffler’s convincing 2024 season, reaffirming his status as the world’s best golfer.
Morikawa applied pressure early and eventually shot 66 points, but it wasn’t enough to deter Scheffler.
A stoic Scheffler smiled at caddie Ted Scott after tapping in a par on the 18th hole.
“It’s a very special feeling to finally hold the trophy,” said Scheffler.
For the third straight year, Scheffler entered the Tour Championship at 10 under par with a two-stroke lead thanks to the FedEx Cup starting strokes format, finishing the job after failing to score in 2022 and 2023.
“I’ve been the player of the year for the tour the last two years and I didn’t leave with this trophy,” Scheffler said. “I think it definitely leaves a bad taste in my mouth at the end of the year, especially when I start off in charge.”
Scheffler became the first player since Tiger Woods (2007) to win seven times on tour in a single season. His other victories came at the Masters, the Players Championship and four signature events.
“We look back at 2024 and it was clearly one of the best individual years any player has had in a long time,” Northern Ireland star Rory McIlroy said as Scheffler completed his round.
Scheffler’s rise comes at a particularly lucrative time in PGA Tour history. With the purse strings rising in recent years, Scheffler has broken the tour record for the most official money in a season for the third year in a row. He has won $29,228,357 in official money this season, not including Sunday’s $25 million FedEx Cup bonus.
And that’s without even mentioning the other major milestones of his year. His first child, Bennett, was born in May. A few days later, Louisville police arrested Scheffler for a traffic miscommunication outside the PGA Championship venue; the charges were dropped by the end of the month. In August, he added an Olympic gold medal to his golf resume.
“I feel like I’ve lived almost a lifetime in this one year,” Scheffler said. “It’s been crazy.”
Scheffler led by five points at the start of the day and extended the margin to seven after two holes. Morikawa birdied the fourth hole before Scheffler crashed into a greenside bunker on the fifth hole for his first bogey.
The playing partners both birdied No. 6, but Scheffler gave up a stroke when his 5-foot par putt skidded past the hole on No. 7, his only miss from inside eight feet this week. He then hit a bunker on the short, par-4 eighth and drove his second shot over the green.
“That particular bunker shot, for some reason I still have to figure out why, but I hit it a lot more often than I should when I’m hitting a side slope like this,” Scheffler said.
The door cracked open for Morikawa, who easily birdied the eighth hole, while Scheffler made his third bogey in four holes. The two-shot swing pushed Morikawa to 23 under, two behind the leader.
In one stroke, Scheffler turned the round in his favor again. On the long par-3 ninth, he hit a 4-iron to just five feet from the pin.
“[Scott] gave me a nice pep talk there on the back of the eighth green because I was kind of looking at him like, ‘Man, I don’t know; this doesn’t look good right now,'” Scheffler said. “He gave me a little pep talk and then I was able to hit a really nice iron and get things rolling.”
That was the start of his birdie streak, as he made a three-footer on the 10th hole and a 15-footer on the 11th. Morikawa got stuck in neutral at the wrong time and missed birdie tries on the 9th and 10th.
“Right after eight, it felt like it was anybody’s game,” Morikawa said. “I knew he wasn’t going to back off easily, and I still had to make a lot of birdies. … It’s those little momentum shifts, that if I make one birdie in those last three holes, I’m three, four behind. It’s like you’re still there, but five shots is a lot, and you need a lot of special things to happen.”
But Morikawa birdied three of his last six holes for his best Tour Championship finish in five trips. He also finished with the lowest 72-hole score of the week, 22-under-par 262, and would have won if the start hadn’t been so staggered.
“I knew that was kind of a goal for the week, right, to get to the top of this kind of fake leaderboard and see how things panned out,” Morikawa said. “Scottie ended up being second or third on that leaderboard, so that didn’t really help.”
Sahith Theegala produced his career-best performance at a FedEx Cup playoff event, holding on to third place at 24 under with a final-round 64.
Georgia native Russell Henley went 5 under over his last six holes, highlighted by a pitch-in eagle on the par-5 18th, to finish the week’s round at 9-under 62 and please the home crowd. Henley finished the week at 19 under, tied for fourth place with Xander Schauffele (68) and Australia’s Adam Scott (67).