You hear us in the sports media exaggerate all the time. We say things like, “That player just did the unthinkable!”
Well, Scottie Scheffler did the absolute *thinkable *on Sunday.
Who could have projected that Scheffler would come from behind to win his second Tour Championship and FedEx Cup title, besides everyone?
Scheffler started the final round Sunday at East Lake Golf Club three behind leader Viktor Hovland and playing in the third-to-final group. The five other players in the last three groups — Hovland, Ryan Gerard, Adam Scott, Ludvig Aberg and Chris Gotterup — all shot a 71 or a 72. A mixture of young up-and-comers and guys who have been around the block, even Hovland, who’s won one of these before. They all cleared a lovely garden path for Scheffler, whose 66 was more than enough to win.
With all due respect to Scheffler, who’s now won more money in his playing career than Tiger Woods and whose consistency I’ve praised as his greatest weapon, this weekend just lacked the juice. As of Tuesday, the biggest story in golf had nothing to do with its season championship, but rather a terribly tone-deaf driver ad produced by Good Good and approved by Callaway.
You get to Thursday, and they set up the course so easy that no one shot over par. Of the 29 players in action (J.J. Spaun withdrew due to injury), the worst score was… an even-par 70.
Before the week was out, the normally mild-mannered Scheffler was going in on the pin locations. Not because any hole was too difficult to make par, but because everyone was making par at No. 9, with no variance of birdies and bogeys.
“Between 87 players going through over the course of three days, you’ve got 79 pars,” he said Saturday. “Seventy-nine pars out of 87 players. Is that a good hole? That seems very high. It’s almost like let’s just skip it at this point. If we’re all going to make par, what’s the point in playing the hole, to be fair?”
This whole tournament could’ve been an email. And that’s why after 2027, it’ll never happen the same way again.
For starters, the venue change everyone’s been calling for will finally arrive. East Lake is a nice course in a major metro (Atlanta) that has never been a particularly exciting destination or interesting test for the best players in the sport. Its proximity to certain sponsors may be the chief reason it has held a permanent spot on the golf calendar.
But not only did CEO Brian Rolapp announce the PGA Tour will rotate new venues for their season finale, he revealed the new format: Two weeks of match play. And however convoluted you may think it is (it’s coming after a season-long champion is already crowned, like a Presidents Cup or Supporters’ Shield), it’s going to get golf sickos and casual fans alike excited.
The first week draws inspiration from the World Cup and draws the top 32 golfers of the season into four groups of eight for a round robin. The top two from each group advance to knockout play the second week — and at a second location. To hear Future Competition Committee member Keith Mitchell tell it, “You’re not one-and-done because some guy has a great round and you’re out of the tournament. The group play kind of solves that.”
Let’s tie it back to Scheffler and 2026. Wouldn’t this have been more interesting:
Scheffler and Hovland advance out of Group A and are put on the opposite sides of the bracket. But in the quarterfinals against Aberg, Scheffler hits it in the water on the fifth hole at Pebble Beach and has to play catch-up the rest of the day. He can’t win enough holes on the back nine and Aberg moves another step closer to the trophy.
Or, for that matter, a similar fictional recap wherein Scheffler dusts the competition in a whole new format.
Because Scheffler ought to be the one most excited about this. Tiger won three WGC Match Play titles in his heyday. Scheffler hasn’t gotten to flex that set of skills much since the tournament was removed from the schedule.
And in a sport he’s come to dominate like nobody since Tiger, we should all be interested in seeing him take on that new challenge in a format likely to make for more interesting August television.
