Scheffler cashes in bigtime at East Lake
World No. 1 caps whopping $62M year; Theegala's integrity proves costly; GB&I claim Curtis Cup
Scottie Scheffler hoisted baby Bennett and the FedEx Cup on Sunday (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
The PGA Tour no longer likes to talk about money.
Despite building its FedEx Cup playoff system that is now 18 years old around an enormous bonus pool that sees 30 guys competing for their shares of a $100 million pot at the final event of the year, you hardly hear anything about money.
That is likely due to the pivot the PGA Tour took with the emergence of LIV Golf and all of its crazy riches bestowed upon players, none of it commercially sustainable as a profit venture but backed by the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia.
The tour had to do something to compete with LIV Golf, and while it isn’t paying enormous signing bonuses, it did institute the signature events that have $20 million purses.
And it made a huge increase this year to the FedEx Cup playoffs, which now give the winner a $25 million bonus.
Scottie Scheffler might not care much for the LIV Golf league, but he ought to be thankful for it nonetheless.
His victory on Sunday at the Tour Championship helped him add to an already bountiful year that saw him win seven times on tour (not including the Olympic gold medal).
The $25 million prize came on top of an $8 million bonus for capturing the Comcast Business Top 10 which was paid out based on regular-season FedEx Cup points through the Wyndham Championship. Players in the top 10 all got bonus money.
And that was on top of the $29,228,357 in official prize money Scheffler earned on the PGA Tour.
That was a record and it’s easy to see why. His seven wins are the most since Tiger Woods won seven in 2007, at a time when purses were substantially lower.
For those keeping track, the total haul for Scheffler this year was $62,228,357 in on-course earnings. He’ll undoubtedly get some tip money from the Player Impact Program pool as well, perhaps as much as $10 million.
What a year.
Scheffler overcame a competitive scare on Sunday when he hit a shank on the eight hole and saw his lead that was as many as seven strokes over Collin Morikawa on the fourth tee drop to two shots when he walked off the eighth green. But he recovered to birdied three consecutive holes to push his lead back to five and ended up with a four-stroke victory and the satisfaction of his first FedEx Cup title.
It capped an amazing season that saw him win the Arnold Palmer Invitational, defend his Players Championship title, win his second Masters, the RBC Heritage, Memorial Tournament and Travelers Championship.
He added Olympic gold and the Tour Championship to a banner year.
The season also saw Scheffler welcome the birth of a first child — a son named Bennett — and somehow make national headlines due to a dubious arrest over a benign traffic issue during the PGA Championship.
Scottie Scheffler had a lot to smile about in 2024 (Daily Drive)
“If you can describe it in words, more power to you, because I don’t think I can,” Scheffler said of his 2024. “It's been a long year. It’s been a very fun year. I think emotionally right now I’m pretty drained
“I really don’t know how to put it into words. It’s been a very eventful year but it’s been really fun. You had the one weird spot there at Valhalla, which — I just don't really know what to say about it — but everything else has been pretty special.”
A year ago, Scheffler lamented a balky putter that consistently prevented him from winning more often, despite dominating in numerous statistical categories.
Things changed when he went to a mallet-style putter prior to the Bay Hill event, with improved putting stats for most of the year added to the 40 statistical categories Scheffler led the tour in.
Last year, he was at the bottom of the strokes gained putting statistics at East Lake. This year, he was third — as well as first in strokes gained off the tee, third in tee to green, third in approach to the green and tied for first in proximity to the hole.
“I think the one thing I’ve always admired about Scottie is the amount of bogey-free rounds he shoots,” said Rory McIlroy, who has won the FedEx Cup three times but finished tied for ninth this year. “If you just go back over the last two, three years and you look at how many rounds he shoots that he’ll shoot like 4-under par, no bogeys, doesn’t look spectacular at all, but it’s just so solid, doesn’t really put himself out of position. When you don’t make a ton of bogeys, the field has got to do something really special to keep up.
“I think golf is such a game of momentum, and when the momentum is going with you and you’re making birdies and you’re shooting scores in the 60s all the time, all you see are birdies and shooting scores in the 60s. It’s like a self-fulfilling sort of thing.
“Then when you get it going the wrong way in golf and you’re seeing bogeys, all you see is bogeys and you’re shooting in the 70s and you’re struggling. I think at the peak of his powers, his confidence is as high as it ever has been, and it’s a pretty nice feeling to have on the golf course.”
Scheffler now has 13 PGA Tour victories — as many as Jordan Spieth — and has done it in dominating fashion.
To think that Xander Schauffele won two major championships — typically the barometer for a great year — and yet in these rare times, it probably doesn’t compare to winning eight times worldwide, including a major and the Players.
“He’s been playing unbelievable golf,” said Schauffele, who tied for fourth at the Tour Championship. “I feel like we’re all just chasing him. I’ve done probably the best job of getting the closest to him, but it’s still very far away. Just a lot of credit to him and his team for putting together a really special year.”
It truly was a special year for Scheffler. And a lucrative one as well.
The bunkers at East Lake were hazardous to Sahith Theegala’s bottom line (Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images)
Theegala’s $2.5M grain of sand
Sahith Theegala officially finished third in the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup — sitting 24-under just two shots behind runner-up Collin Morikawa and six behind Scottie Scheffler’s 30-under finish. The solo third was worth $7.5 million.
Theegala, however, posted the second lowest gross 72-hole score of 21-under that fit right between Morikawa’s 22-under gross and Scheffler’s 20-under score not counting the Tour Championship starting strokes. Impressive stuff from the 26-year-old.
But there’s more. In Saturday’s third round, Theegala called a penalty on himself for touching a granule or two of sand on his backswing from a funky lie in fairway bunker on the third hole. PGA Tour rules officials reviewed camera footage and saw no evidence that Theegala touched the sand. But he insisted he did and the result was a two-shot penalty that turned his par on the hole into a double.
“I really think I moved the sand; it’s just a bummer there’s not clear footage,” Theegala said. “If someone were to ask me, ‘did you move the sand?’ I would say yes, because I saw it. I thought I saw it, and we’ve played a lot of golf and your intuition as a golfer is very rarely wrong. So it’s a tough pill to swallow, but rules of golf are the rules of golf.
“I think that’s a rule that seems a little silly to lose two shots on a on a thing like that, but that’s the gray line of intent. You can do a lot of other silly things in a bunker. You can fall in a bunker. You can drop your club in a bunker by accident and it’s not a penalty at all.”
Theegala deserves credit for calling a penalty on himself that nobody else in the world saw happen or could even prove happened. But it was a very costly moment of integrity.
Financially, those two strokes cost him a share of second with Morikawa, which is a $2.5 million hit to Theegala’s bottom line. It also cost him credit for first place in the Official World Golf Ranking, because those two shots would have given him the low 72-hole score one shot ahead of Morikawa. That would have put him on the cusp of first first career top-10 ranking.
“So I’m paying the price for it, and I feel good about it,” Theegala said Saturday (he left on Sunday without speaking to the media). “Like I said, I’m not 100 percent sure, but I’d say I’m 98-, 99 percent sure that some sand was moved.
“I’ve just played so much golf. You spend so much time of your life staring down at the lie you have, the ball you have, and it just did not feel like a normal fairway bunker shot. It felt like some of the sand moved. At the end of the day I’m good with the ruling, and I think it’s very fair that I was assessed two shots.”
Great Britain & Ireland gets the job done at Sunningdale (R&A)
GB&I dramatically ends Curtis Cup drought
SUNNINGDALE, ENGLAND (R&A) — Great Britain and Ireland claimed a historic 10½-9½ victory over the United States in the 43rd Curtis Cup after a thrilling final day at Sunningdale, snapping an eight-year drought in the biennial competition.
GB&I captain Catriona Matthew, who famously led Europe to back-to-back Solheim Cup triumphs in 2019 and 2021, savored another famous team success against Meghan Stasi’s USA team.
The decorated Scot led GB&I to its first win in the Curtis Cup since 2016 at Dún Laoghaire in Ireland and sealed only a ninth triumph overall in the history of the contest that dates to 1932.
With the hosts leading 7-5 overnight, GB&I needed three-and-a-half points from the eight singles matches to triumph. Ireland’s Sara Byrne (who never lost a match), England’s Patience Rhodes and Scotland’s Lorna McClymont were all victorious, with Rhodes’ sister, Mimi, securing the precious half point.
“Coming into this week if I was told I was going to go undefeated, I probably wouldn’t have believed you to be honest,” said Byrne. “It’s a really special feeling to end my amateur career just like that. It’s pretty special.”
On a tense final day, which ebbed and flowed in the sunshine over the Old Course at the Berkshire venue, the USA began the singles in dominant fashion helped by the team featuring four of the top-10 players on the World Amateur Golf Ranking.
At one stage the visitors were ahead in six matches, but GB&I staged a wonderful response to turn the tide and celebrate in style as each member of Matthew’s team delivered at least a point across the match.
A record crowd for a Curtis Cup enjoyed the three-day match, totaling 16,680. Justin Rose (runner-up at the 152nd Open at Royal Troon in July), Charley Hull and Colin Montgomerie were among the onlookers this week as Sunningdale hosted the Curtis Cup for the first time.
Asterisk Talley, 15, put the first point on the board for the USA in the opening match, recording five birdies and an eagle at the 10th in a victory over world No. 1 Lottie Woad. It was a first defeat in five matches this week for the reigning Augusta National Women’s Amateur champion.
“It was really fun out there today,” said Talley. “I played some great golf. I was just excited to get out there with Lottie and play my best. We (the USA team) had a lot of fun. I felt like we really bonded throughout the week. Even if we lost our matches we still had fun with each other. We got a lot closer.”
Ireland’s Sarah Byrne went undefeated (R&A)
Patience Rhodes picked the perfect day to deliver her first point of the week, easing to a 6&5 win over Zoe Campos. Byrne secured an impressive 3&2 triumph against Catherine Park, the Irishwoman taking her tally to 3½ points from five in an unbeaten display — before Anna Davis replied with a 3&2 win over Hannah Darling.
Jasmine Koo closed the deficit to 9-8 after wrapping up a 4&3 success against Beth Coulter, helped by back-to-back birdies at the 10th and 11th.
All eyes turned to McClymont, a two-time R&A Student Tour Series Order of Merit winner, in a pivotal meeting with 2023 U.S. Women’s Amateur champion Megan Schofill in the penultimate match.
That battle was all-square through eight holes before the Scot made the decisive move, birdieing four of the next five holes and winning three of them to take a commanding lead that she would not relinquish.
At the same time, Mimi Rhodes mounted the gutsiest of comebacks against Melanie Green, winnging 8, 11, 13 and 14 to turn a three-hole deficit into a one-hole lead.
Rhodes then held firm down the stretch and jubilantly celebrated her key par putt at the 17th to go dormie. Green won the 18th to halve the match, but the half point proved decisive for GB&I.
McClymont’s success and the half-point for Mimi Rhodes meant convincing victories for Koo and three-time Curtis Cup player Rachel Kuehn against Aine Donegan were not enough for the USA.
There were joyous scenes on the final green as the match between Green and Rhodes was completed, with the latter swamped by her ecstatic teammates.
“They’re a fantastic team. I’m so proud of them,” said Matthew. “They really dug in every day and in every session. It didn’t look as though it was perhaps going our way today but they really toughed it out. …
“My hat’s off to the Americans as well. There was some fantastic golf on all three days and it just made it a spectacle for women’s golf. The golf this week really was quite amazing. I think the future of women’s golf is in good hands.”
The victors join a Sunningdale champions board that incudes Judy Rankin, Nancy Lopez, Karrie Webb, Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosnam, Nick Faldo, the 1987 USA Walker Cup team and Karen Stupples, a member of Matthew’s backroom team this week.
The 44th Curtis Cup will be played at Bel-Air Country Club in Los Angeles in 2026.