[PHOTO: Tracy Wilcox]
During the final round’s Tour Championship broadcast, NBC’s Dan Hicks mentioned the event’s “brand-new format”, which must have been confusing to some fans. On one hand, the PGA Tour’s season finale had switched from a controversial format featured the past six years. On the other, it was now being played as just a normal 72-hole, strokeplay tournament.
Regardless, the change wound up having a huge effect on the event’s outcome. And nobody felt that more than Scottie Scheffler.
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The world No.1 is a lock to be the PGA Tour’s Player of the Year for a fourth consecutive season, but he came up short of winning at East Lake with a T-4 finish. Scheffler’s efforts earned him some $US2.6 million in prizemoney, but it would have been a lot more money under the staggered-start format that had been used from 2019 to 2024.
Under that method, Scheffler, due to holding the No.1 spot in the FedEx Cup standings going to East Lake, would have began the week at 10-under-par and with a two-shot lead over No.2 Rory McIlroy. And he would have had a five-shot edge over No.5 Tommy Fleetwood, who won his maiden PGA Tour title along with the FedEx Cup yesterday.
So, if we do some basic maths, Scheffler’s 14-under total on top of his starting position of 10 under would have put him at 24-under. Meanwhile, Fleetwood’s five-under start plus his 18-under for the week would have left him at 23-under.
Fleetwood’s first PGA Tour win earned him the tour’s biggest prize, a $US10 million payout. So not only did the format change potentially keep Scheffler from another win, it also cost him $US7.4 million ($A11.4 million).
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We say “potentially”, because, of course, you never know how things would have actually played out given the different starting circumstances. But at least part of Scheffler has to be shaking his head that he won the FedEx Cup only once during this dominant four-year stretch.
That being said, Scheffler can’t feel too bad about claiming $US17.6 million in FedEx Cup bonus money. Scheffler earned a $10 million bonus for being No.1 in the standings at the end of the regular season and an additional $5 million for still holding the top spot heading into the Tour Championship. Here’s a look at how those bonuses worked this year (in US dollars):
Not to mention, Scheffler also earned another $US8 million bonus last month for being No.1 on the Comcast Business Top 10 standings – essentially the same thing as the regular-season FedEx Cup bonus – through the end of the Wyndham Championship. So, yeah, he’s doing OK. And by adding his prizemoney earnings from East Lake to his career total, he managed to pass Phil Mickelson and jump to No.3 on the all-time list with $US98.3 million overall.
Now, here’s the funny part about all of this. Under the old format, Fleetwood would actually have won more in bonus money as well. Even with a runner-up, he would have claimed $US12.5 million. Instead, he earned a total of $US12 million – $10 million for winning the Tour Championship plus about $2 million for being ninth in the regular season and fifth heading into the Tour Championship.
Not that Tommy cares. For him, finally hoisting a PGA Tour trophy – two, in this case – was worth a lot more.
