HARTFORD, Connecticut – Travelers Championship officials and fans had to be delighted with what transpired Sunday in the PGA Tour’s season-ending Tour Championship.
Scottie Scheffler, winner of Connecticut’s biggest sporting event in June, overcame a rare shank with three consecutive birdies on the way to a closing 4-under-par 67 and a 72-hole total of 30-under 264, four better than Collin Morikawa, at East Lake Country Club in Atlanta. It completed one of the best years in PGA Tour history, eliminated any doubt who the Player of the Year is for the third consecutive year, provided his first FedExCup championship and solidified his position as No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings.
Scheffler had 25-handicappers everywhere feeling like themselves at the short par-4 eighth hole, where he hit his drive into a greenside bunker and then shanked his second 36 yards past the pin. A poor chip and two putts gave Scheffler a bogey 5, while Morikawa made a birdie to slice Scheffler’s only seven-stroke lead to two.
After the unexpected bogey, Scheffler responded like a champion as he rifled a 4-iron shot to five feet for the only birdie of the day at the par-3 ninth. He then birdied the next two holes, including a 15-foot putt at No. 11, and wasn’t challenged the rest of the way while ending frustration in the PGA Tour’s richest event the past two years.
Scheffler began the day with a five-shot lead but stumbled on the front nine before his turnaround starting at the ninth hole on the way to leading the FedExCup points standings for the final 26 weeks.
“I was a bit frustrated after the eighth hole, but (caddie) Ted (Scott) did a good job of helping me reset,” Scheffler said.
Scheffler’s back nine included the only eagle 3 on the 14th hole that all but assured his first wire-to-wire victory and made him the first player since Tiger Woods in 2006 to win seven PGA Tour titles in a year. Four of the wins came in Signature Events, including the Travelers Championship in a playoff with Tom Kim to become the first player since Arnold Palmer in 1962 to win six PGA Tour titles in a season before July. He also won a second Masters title and was the first to go back-to-back in The Players Championship, and his $25 million check gave him a record $64,228,357 for the year and $96,793,586 in his career since joining the PGA Tour in 2020.
And Scheffler built his stunning season while being charged with felony second-degree assault on a police officer, third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding signals from officer directing traffic while he was on his way to the first round of the PGA Championship in May.
“That was the weirdest day I’ve ever had,” Scheffler said.
But the charges were dismissed less than two weeks later after video of the arrest aftermath emerged.
“After what happened at the PGA Championship, I didn’t know what was going to happen,” Scheffler said, “but I got a lot of support from family and a lot of friends.”
Morikawa closed with 66 to finish with the best score of the week, 22 under, one better than Scheffler and Sahith Theegala, to win $12,500,000. The Tour Championship’s FedExCup Starting Strokes format gave one player the lead at 10-under in a unique situation, one that Scheffler tried to downplay by ignoring the leaderboard at the start of the week. Morikawa, Scheffler’s teammate on the 2017 Walker Cup team, started the week six strokes back. Theegala shot 63 to finish third at 264 and earn $7.5 million.
Scheffler’s switch to the mallet putter set the stage for his dominant year. After struggling with his putting for much of 2023, he debuted the club at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and went on to win there, plus five more times on the PGA Tour, including the Masters, as well as the Olympic gold medal. He also previously captured The Players Championship and became the first player to win that event back-to-back, the Masters and the Tour Championship in the same year.
“This is always a tough week because it’s such a big event with the best players and so much media,” Scheffler said.
But as he did much of the year, Scheffler proved to be No. 1 once again.
“Yeah, it’s a lot of fun,” Scheffler said. “We’ve put in a lot of work to get to this point, and it’s been a long week. Right now, I’m just pretty tired, so don’t really know how to put this into words. But it’s a pretty special feeling to be finally holding the trophy.
“I feel like I’ve lived almost a full lifetime in this one year. It’s been nuts. I don’t know, I think it just always comes back to my faith. I think that’s the thing that just keeps me grounded, keeps me in the right frame of mind.”
Morikawa played with Scheffler the last three rounds and will be a teammate in the Presidents Cup on Sept. 26-29 at Royal Montreal GC in Canada.
“Just nothing fazes him,” Morikawa said. “Whether I was close in gaining some ground or he was gaining ground, it didn’t change how he walked or how he played or how he went through every shot. That’s something to learn. I think his mental game is a lot stronger than a lot of people know. It’s amazing what he’s been able to do for this entire season, and honestly kind of over this past, what is it, three years now. It’s been really cool to watch him, and hopefully I can draw something from that.”
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