Tag: PGA Tour Player of the Year

Did PGA Tour players botch their Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year winners? Let’s see what the numbers have to say

The races for both awards were close, and those who came up short can make the case they should’ve won.

Three days into the new year, and the PGA Tour finally announced its winners for the 2023 Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year awards ahead of its first event of 2024 later this week in Hawaii.

Scottie Scheffler won the Jack Nicklaus Award as the Player of the Year for the second consecutive season while Eric Cole picked up the Arnold Palmer Award as the Rookie of the Year. Both had terrific seasons and were worthy of consideration, but should they have been the winners?

Below is a pair of tables for both awards with blind resumes for each. Let’s see what the numbers have to say for both honors.

Player of the Year

Player Wins Major finishes Runner-up Top 10 Top 25 Missed cuts Total events
Player 1 4 1-T50-T10-T2 2 10 13 1 20
Player 2 2 T10-T2-3-T23 2 17 21 0 23
Player 3 3 T7-T2-19-T13 1 9 18 0 23

Talk about two stellar seasons. Players 2 and 3 didn’t miss a cut and were more consistent with top 10 and top 25 finishes, though they did make three more starts. Player 2 was more consistent but didn’t win as much as Players 3 or 1 (who also bagged a major championship).

Nine players out of 10 would take Player 1’s season over Players 2 or 3. Winning matters more to these guys than just about anything. They don’t tee it up to simply compete and get in contention. That extra win for Player 3 might even trump the slightly more consistent year of Player 2.

Player 1 was Jon Rahm, Player 2 was Scheffler, and Player 3 was FedEx Cup champion Viktor Hovland, who claimed the last two playoff events of the season.

The players will catch some considerable flack for Rahm’s apparent slight, especially after the Spaniard recently took his talents to the rival LIV Golf. This also marks the second consecutive year the winner of the season-long FedEx Cup wasn’t the Player of the Year.

Rookie of the Year

Player Wins Runner-up Top 10 Top 25 Missed cuts Total events
Player 1 1 1 4 8 1 11
Player 2 0 2 7 14 10 37

These two contenders had considerably different seasons. Player 1 has a smaller body of work but holds a clear advantage with a win. He finished inside the top 10 in 36 percent of his starts and 73 percent of the time he was in the top 25. Comparatively, 19 percent of the time Player 2 was in the top 10, and 38 percent of his starts ended with top 25 finishes. Once again, the advantage goes to Player 1 (although Player 2 made three times the appearances).

If you didn’t figure it out just by seeing the stats, Player 1 was rising star Ludvig Aberg, while Player 2 was the award-winner Cole. Aberg was in college for more than half the Tour’s season, and his fewer appearances may have weighed him down in the eyes of his peers. That said, he played as often as he could and contended more than his counterpart.

All five players were worthy of consideration, but the numbers point to different outcomes.

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Scottie Scheffler voted PGA Tour Player of the Year over Jon Rahm who jumped to LIV Golf

Scheffler is the fourth player to win the Jack Nicklaus Award in back-to-back seasons.

Twice is nice for Scottie Scheffler.

On Wednesday, the 27-year-old Texan was named the winner of the Jack Nicklaus Award as the PGA Tour Player of the Year for the 2022-23 season.

“I was very pleased with the news.  I was very proud of how I played most of last year. The consistency was very special to me,” he said. “To be able to win this award two years in a row is truly special.”

In doing so, he becomes the first player to win Player of the Year honors in back-to-back seasons since Tiger Woods won the award in three straight years from 2005-2007 and 11 times overall. Scheffler said that PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan called him to tell him that he had won the award and that he was one of less than a handful of back-to-back winners.

“So I looked to see how many times Tiger won it and there was years from like 2000 to 2008 where he won it almost every year. I think Vijay clipped it one year and that was it. So he’s got some pretty absurd stats like that,” Scheffler said. “Anytime you can be mentioned in the same breath with Tiger it’s very special. I grew up idolizing him as a player, and anytime you can get mentioned with him is very special.”

The Player of the Year award is determined by a member vote, with PGA Tour members who played in at least 15 official FedEx Cup events during the 2022-23 season eligible to vote. The voting period ran from Dec. 1 through Dec. 15. Scheffler received 38 percent of the vote and was selected over four other nominees: U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark, FedEx Cup champ Viktor Hovland, Rory McIlroy and Masters champ Jon Rahm.

BY THE NUMBERS: Did the players get the vote right?

Rahm, who won the GWAA Player of the Year Award on Tuesday, which is voted on by members of the media, won four times last season before defecting to LIV Golf last month. When Scheffler was asked if he was surprised that he won, he said, “Maybe a little bit. I think it was a close race. It could have gone either way.”

Asked the same question on a separate conference call with media, he said, “I just think it depends on what the guys kind of looked at for their vote. I guess this year they really kind of appreciated my consistency. Like I said, I was very proud of that. The way I played the entire year, I think I maybe only had one or two starts that were — that I would categorize as not great, but other than that I had a lot of starts where I just played really solid golf and to do that for an entire season out here I think is very difficult. I’m very proud of that aspect of my game.”

Scheffler won twice during the 2022-23 season successfully defending his title at the WM Phoenix Open and winning the Players Championship by five strokes. (He also won the Hero World Challenge in December.) In 23 starts, Scheffler recorded 13 top-fives and 17 top-10s, both high marks for any player in a single season on Tour since 2005, when Vijay Singh and Woods each had 13 top-fives and Singh had 18 top-10s. Scheffler never missed a cut and set the Tour record for most official money earned in a single season at $21,014,342, breaking his own record set last season ($14,046,910).

Scheffler is the fourth player to win the Jack Nicklaus Award in back-to-back seasons since the award was established in 1990, joining Fred Couples (1991, 1992), Nick Price (1993, 1994), and Woods (five straight from 1999-2003, three straight from 2005-2007). McIlroy (three times) and Dustin Johnson (twice) are the only other players to win Player of the Year honors multiple times.

Scheffler also received the Byron Nelson Award for recording the lowest scoring average on Tour in 2022-23. At 68.63, Scheffler’s scoring average was the lowest on Tour since Tiger Woods in 2009 (68.05).

Scheffler was presented the award at The Sentry, the 2024 season-opening event in Maui, Hawaii.

Patrick Cantlay, who in 2021 edged Rahm for Player of the Year, recalled visiting Woods at his home shortly after he received the Jack Nicklaus Award.

“It felt like a big deal to me at the time that I had got a Player of the Year, and they give you this little Jack Nicklaus bronze trophy that’s about yeah high,” Cantlay recalled. “So we’re walking through Tiger’s house and we’re in the basement and he’s got, like, 11 of ’em lined up right next to each other all in the corner of the basement boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, and I go, ‘Hey, I’m catching up,’ and he looked at me and he goes, ‘You got a lot of work to do.'”

Here are the five nominees 2023 PGA Tour Player of the Year

The winners will be announced in January at The Sentry, the first event of the 2024 season.

Scottie Scheffler was named last year’s PGA Tour Player of the Year in September of 2022. This time around, the award is being doled out in January because of the FedEx Cup Fall Series, which extended eligibility for that award as well as PGA Tour Rookie of the Year.

Scheffler is among the five finalists for the Jack Nicklaus Award, going to the top player on the circuit.

He’s looking to become the first back-to-back winner of the award since Tiger Woods won it three times in a row from 2005 to 2007. Fred Couples and Nick Price are the only others to win it two times in a row since the award was first given out in 1990.

The Player of the Year for the 2022-23 season was finalized by the PGA Tour Player directors and members of the Player Advisory Council (PAC).

Voting for the Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year awards will take place among PGA Tour members who played in at least 15 official FedExCup events during the season. The voting will close on Friday, Dec. 15, at 5 p.m. ET.

The winners will be announced in January at The Sentry, the first event of the 2024 season, which marks the return of the calendar-based schedule.

Here are the five nominees, listed in alphabetical order below, for the PGA Tour Player of the Year.

Scottie Scheffler presented PGA Tour Player of the Year award live on ESPN’s College GameDay

Scottie Scheffler is taking home the Jack Nicklaus Award.

Scottie Scheffler was named the 2022 PGA Tour Player of the Year in voting by the Tour’s membership.

In receiving 89 percent of the votes, Scheffler was selected for the honor over the other two nominees: Rory McIlroy and Cameron Smith.

In doing so, Scheffler became the first player to win Korn Ferry Player of the Year, PGA Tour Rookie of the Year and Player of the Year honors. Scheffler, who spent four years on the men’s golf team at the University of Texas, received the Jack Nicklaus Award during an appearance on ESPN’s College GameDay before the Longhorns football team hosted No. 1 Alabama in Austin. Texas coach John Fields presented Scheffler the trophy in front of the reigning NCAA men’s championship golf team.

“It’s very special,” Scheffler said. “It was definitely a surprise this morning. It means a lot to me. Never really expected anything like that.”

Scheffler, the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking, led the Tour with four victories this season, including his first major championship title at the Masters.

“Scottie Scheffler is going to win the Player of the Year. There’s no doubt about that,” McIlroy said after winning the Tour Championship and FedEx Cup. “He played an unbelievable season.”

Scheffler’s four victories came at the WM Phoenix Open, Arnold Palmer Invitational, World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play and the Masters. He collected all four in the span of six starts, becoming the first player to win four times in a six-start stretch since Jason Day during the 2014-15 season. Only Tiger Woods (eight times) had previously won four times, including a major and a WGC, in the same season. Scheffler totaled 11 top-10 finishes in 25 starts on the season, including runner-up finishes at the Cadence Bank Houston Open, Charles Schwab Challenge, the U.S. Open and the Tour Championship.

Scheffler held the lead in the FedEx Cup standings for 24 weeks, including the final 23 weeks of the FedEx Cup regular season, and went on to finish in a tie for second at the Tour Championship, receiving $5.75 million in FedEx Cup bonus money.

With $14,046,910 in official money, Scheffler earned the most in a single season in Tour history, a record previously held by fellow former Texas Longhorn Jordan Spieth ($12,030,465 in 2014-15). Scheffler also received $4 million via the Comcast Business Tour top 10 for finishing the regular season as the FedEx Cup leader and $1 million for winning the season-long Aon Risk Reward Challenge. Between official money and bonus programs, Scheffler earned a total of $24,796,910 this season.

“Undoubtably, one of the highest compliments a player can receive is the endorsement from his peers, and the fact that Scottie’s season was both dominant and consistent spoke volumes to the membership,” said Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan.

Scheffler, 26, was the Player of the Year on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2019 and won the Arnold Palmer Award as PGA Tour Rookie of the Year in 2020.

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Peers vote FedEx Cup champion Patrick Cantlay the PGA Tour Player of the Year

En route to receiving the Jack Nicklaus Award voted on by his peers, Cantlay won four times.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – FedEx Cup champion Patrick Cantlay, the only player to win more than twice during the 2020-21 super season, was named the PGA Tour’s Player of the Year, it was announced Tuesday.

En route to receiving the Jack Nicklaus Award voted on by his peers, Cantlay won four times, including the last two events of the FedEx Cup Playoffs. The world No. 4 won the Zozo Championship last fall, the Memorial in June, and then the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship to wrap up the FedEx Cup Playoffs and the $15 million grand prize.

“Receiving this award through a member vote reflects the respect his peers have for Patrick,” PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan said in a release. “His play throughout 2020-21 was phenomenal, and in stepping up to win consecutive FedEx Cup Playoffs events and the FedEx Cup, Patrick was at his best when it mattered most in our season.”

The other players on the ballot were world No. 1 and 2021 U.S. Open champion Jon Rahm, No. 3 and reigning British Open champion Collin Morikawa, No. 7 and 2020 U.S. Open champion Bryson DeChambeau, and No. 11 Harris English.

Cantlay fired a final-round 65 to defeat Rahm and Justin Thomas by one shot to win the Zozo Championship. He defeated Morikawa in a playoff to win the Memorial. He defeated DeChambeau in an epic six-hole playoff to win the BMW Championship. And armed with a 2-shot lead in the Tour Championship due to the staggered scoring format, he held off Rahm by one shot.

Cantlay, who has six career PGA Tour titles, made 24 starts and had seven top 10s, including a runner-up finish in the American Express and a tie for third in the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.

Rahm made a compelling case for the award. He won the U.S. Open 15 days after testing positive for COVID-19 at the Memorial. He was told of the result moments after completing his third round with a six-shot lead and was forced to withdraw. With his substantial advantage, he likely would have won instead of Cantlay.

Rahm also tied for the lowest total at the Tour Championship with Kevin Na. But because of the staggered scoring system – he started the tournament four shots out of the lead – he fell one shot short of Cantlay.

Rahm also led the Tour in several statistical categories, including scoring average (69.3), total driving, official money, top-10s (he had 15 and no one else had 10), birdie average, Strokes Gained: Tee-to Green, and Strokes Gained: Total.

In the six major championships, Rahm finished in ties for 23rd, seventh, fifth, eighth and third and won the U.S. Open. He also tied for ninth in The Players. Cantlay finished in ties for 43rd, 17th, 23rd, 15th and missed two cuts in the six majors. He also didn’t make it to the weekend in The Players.

But the PGA Tour membership gave the nod to Cantlay and his four wins.

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Voting for PGA Tour Player of the Year is now closed. Who’s it going to be?

Voting for the PGA Tour Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year closed at 5 p.m. ET on Friday, Sept. 10.

The votes are in. Now we wait.

Nominees were finalized last Sunday at the conclusion of the Tour Championship.

The Player of the Year finalists are Patrick Cantlay, Bryson DeChambeau, Harris English, Collin Morikawa and Jon Rahm. The Rookie of the Year finalists are Garrick Higgo and Will Zalatoris.

PGA Tour golfers who played in at least 15 official FedEx Cup events during the 2020-21 season were eligible to vote. All votes were due by 5 p.m. ET on Sept. 10.

The Tour says the “winners will be announced at a later date” so while we keep refreshing our inboxes for that announcement here’s a closer look at the five finalists for top player and two finalists for top rookie.

Here’s a breakdown. Players listed alphabetically.

Patrick Cantlay

Four wins: Zozo Championship at Sherwood, Memorial, BMW Championship and the Tour Championship

Won the 2021 FedEx Cup

Fifth in scoring average at 69.736

Seven top-10s

Made 19 cuts

Bryson DeChambeau

Two wins: 2020 U.S. Open, the Arnold Palmer Invitational

Finished seventh in the FedEx Cup

Fourth in scoring average at 69.728

Nine top-10s

Made 20 cuts

Harris English

Two wins: Sentry Tournament of Champions, Travelers Championship

Finished 18th in the FedEx Cup

Finished 22nd in scoring average 70.115

Eight top-10s

Made 22 cuts

Collin Morikawa

Two wins: World Golf Championships-Workday Championship at The Concession, 121st Open Championship

Finished No. 26 in the FedEx Cup

Finished 20th in scoring average at 70.109

Eight top-10s

Made 19 cuts

Jon Rahm

One win: 2021 U.S. Open

Finished No. 2 in the FedEx Cup

Led the PGA Tour in scoring average at 69.300

Led the PGA Tour in top-10s with 15

Made 21 cuts

Golfweek‘s Steve DiMeglio recently filed his opinion on the matter, saying “There are a lot of checkmarks for Rahm. But the biggest checkmark is for wins.” And that’s why Cantlay would get his vote after he posted four wins during the season, while Rahm had one, although it was a big one, the U.S. Open.

Just two players make the up the list of finalists for Rookie of the Year: Garrick Higgo, who played in just eight events but won one of them, Palmetto Championship at Congaree, and Will Zalatoris who played 25 times and posted eight top-10s including a solo second at the 2021 Masters Tournament.

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