Scottie Scheffler has every reason to dislike the FedEx Cup Playoffs format after what has happened over the past two years.
In both 2022 and 2023, Scheffler arrived at East Lake as the top-ranked player in the FedEx Cup standings, meaning he held a two-shot lead over the second-ranked player at 10-under par at the start of the tournament. But he did not win the FedEx Cup on either occasion. The Tour Championship employs a ‘Starting Strokes Format,’ which doles out strokes based on a player’s performance throughout the season. Yet, the best player only receives a two-shot advantage going into the final 72 holes.
As such, Scheffler is not a fan.
“I think it’s silly,” Scheffler said.
“You can’t call it a season-long race and have it come down to one tournament.”
Scheffler currently has an astronomical lead in the FedEx Cup standings over Xander Schauffele, the second-ranked player in the season-long race. Schauffele, who has had a career year himself, is nearly 2,000 points behind Scheffler, who has won six times this season. Rory McIlroy, meanwhile, is about 1,500 points behind Schauffele in third place—and 3,500 behind Scheffler, while Collin Morikawa, the fourth-ranked player, is only 100 points behind McIlroy—proof that Scheffler and Schauffele are in a tier of their own.
But Scheffler is in a whole different atmosphere thanks to his wins at Bay Hill, TPC Sawgrass, Augusta National, Harbour Town, Muirfield Village, and most recently, TPC River Highlands. Oh, and he won the gold medal in Paris, too, but that is not an official PGA Tour event. Scheffler also has 14 top-10s of the 16 events he has played.
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He has been the best player this season, even though Schauffele won a pair of majors at Valhalla and Royal Troon.
“I try not to think too much about the results at tournaments, and I’m not going to look back on my season really any differently if I don’t win East Lake,” Scheffler said.
“I’m going to show up there and do my best. I think I’ve been No. 1 the last two years going into the tournament. Went in 2022 having a really great chance to win and wasn’t able to pull it off, and last year really just played poorly pretty much the entire week.”
Scheffler also added fuel to his argument with an excellent hypothetical—one that could certainly transpire since he sustained a neck injury during The Players Championship in March.
“Hypothetically, we get to East Lake, and my neck flares up, and it doesn’t heal the way it did at The Players; I finish 30th in the FedExCup because I had to withdraw from the last tournament. Is that really the season-long race? No,” Scheffler said.
“I don’t really consider it the season-long race like I think the way it’s called. But you’ve got to figure out a way to strike a balance between it being a good TV product and it still being a season-long race. Right now, I don’t know exactly how the ratings are or anything like that, but I know for a fact you can’t really quite call it the season-long race when it comes down to one stroke-play tournament on the same golf course each year.”
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.
