The fact that Scottie Scheffler has won the Jack Nicklaus Award for Player of the Year on the PGA Tour does not surprise anyone. Perhaps some doubts arose at the moment when Fedex Cup.
Scottie has won the street election, with 91% of the votes; second was Schauffele and third was McIlroy. He is the only player along with Tiger Woods to have lifted the Nicklaus Trophy three times in a row. Of course, last year Jon Rahm started as a favorite to obtain this award, but his signing for LIV Golf penalized him.
Scheffler, 28, can boast of an impeccable season, sprinkled with seven victories: Arnold Palmer, The Players, Masters, RBC Heritage, Memorial, Travelers and Olympic Games. Although he won the Fedex Cup, the Tour Championship does not count as a victory, because without taking into account the handicap that applies in this tournament, the winner was Morikawa. Of course, beyond his successes, there is one fact that fans will not forget: when he was arrested just before the start of the PGA Championship.
Today Scottie made a public appearance – via video call – at the opening of a PGA Tour store and it was inevitable that the comparison with Tiger Woods arose. The one from New Jersey does not even consider that there can be a debate in this sense: “I think we always seek to compare someone with Tiger. “I saw it a lot when I was a kid… Actually, there’s only one Tiger, and that’s it.” Scheffler also defined the moment of the season in which he reached his peak: “I would say that the nine holes that have caught my attention the most are the last nine of the Olympic Games.”
The Tiger Y2K Effect
Although the world number one is not a fan of comparisons, his 2024 campaign deserves a place in golf history, thanks to the aforementioned seven victories – 1 major – and 16 top 10s in 19 tournaments. Is his season on par with Tiger’s 2000? Although what Scheffler has done is truly incredible, it is worth remembering that the Tiger achieved nine victories, including three majors; two of them, with historical margins of 15 and 8 shots ahead. He was also ‘top 5’ in 17 of 20 tournaments. The Californian took golf that year to its highest level of popularity in its entire history.
To cite other memorable seasons, in 1943 Byron Nelson scored 16 tournaments (1 major, the only one that was organized that year due to WWII) of the 30 in which he participated. Another of the campaigns often remembered is that of 1930 because it was in which Bobby Jones won the four ‘majors’, the only time this has been achieved, although two of them were the US Amateur and the British Amateur, but it is who won the finals by 8 and 7 and 7 and 6 respectively. Let’s also mention Ben Hogan, who in 1953 won the Masters by five shots, the US Open by six and the British Open by four.
