So, Scottie Scheffler recently had $8M transferred to his bank account. The world no.1 didn’t hit a shot. He didn’t have to; he was chilling at home basking in the afterglow of his Olympic glory. The regular season, meanwhile, ended at Sedgefield Country Club; extended by a day thanks to Matt Kuchar’s decision to avail a Monday finish.
With that, the Comcast Business Tour Top 10 was set. Scheffler emerged at the top, raking in $8M more to his kitty. The Dallas native has also shattered the Tour’s record of season-earning for three consecutive years. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Scheffler has jumped quite a few spots, but is the No.1 there?
‘I make money moves,’ Brooks Koepka once captioned a post on Instagram. The Smash captain posed with a few of his Ryder Cup teammates, including Scheffler’s close friend, Sam Burns, in a Smash GC jersey. Although World No. 1 wasn’t present, it seemed he took some inspiration or issue.
Scheffler has pocketed more than $28M from this season alone. That’s just his career earnings excluding all the bonuses, endorsements, and other stuff. With his inexplicable penchant for showing up at the big games, Scheffler netted six victories, one was a major, and three were limited-field Signature events, and in between he won the PLAYERS too.
The Masters put $3.6M in his pocket. The victory at TPC Sawgrass, which came partly thanks to Wyndham Clark and Xander Schauffele, Scheffler earned a whopping $4.5M. Two of those three Signature events he won were player-hosted (Arnold Palmer and the Memorial). That meant a bigger payout for the winner—20% instead of the regular 18%—a total of $8M from both. The RBC Heritage triumph added $3.6M more to his kitty.
On top of it, Scheffler also came close to winning twice more. The missed 5-footer at the Texas Children’s Houston Open meant the 28-year-old had to settle for a T2 and $553,735. Whereas, the T2 at Charles Schwab Challenge earned him $809,900.
Scheffler’s total earnings this season are almost double that of the next best, two-time major winner, Xander Schauffele. Another fact: his caddie, Ted Scott, has earned more than some of the PGA Tour stars this season. Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler would likely rank behind the veteran looper. That’s what happens when your employer brings home 56% of the money he plays for.
Scottie Scheffler hasn’t touched Tiger Woods yet, but…
Scheffler has earned a whopping $70M in career earnings. He is the fifth highest-ranked player in the chart topped by a certain Stanford dropout. Tiger Woods, despite not being very active for almost a decade, sits at the top of a $120M mountain. In the nearest base camp, Rory McIlroy rests with $90M in fortune.
The two players, who Scheffler has to overtake to reach close to the Ulsterman, currently ply their trade in the senior tour: Jim Furyk, and Vijay Singh. The difference is a ‘mere’ $1M, or less than a 3rd place finish at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. Of course, Scheffler has two more of these post-season tournaments to wipe the gap by September 1, when the FedEx Cup playoff wraps up.
But here it gets more interesting. Even last year, Scheffler was nowhere close to the top two. A number of his ‘seniors’ Fowler, Spieth, Justin Thomas, Jon Rahm, and others were ahead of him. In the last eight months, the Dallas resident has vaulted 15 spots in the PGA Tour career money leaderboard.
Another year back, Scheffler was 80th in the all-time career money list. 12 titles later, he is almost at the top within touching distance of Woods. The two-time Masters champion has nabbed a whopping $50M in the last two seasons alone.
Outside of that, the two-time major winner is primed to top the PIP list this year. Last year, the former Texas Longhorn netted $6M for a fifth-place finish. Sounds ridiculous to put it like this, but the truth is that Scheffler’s popularity skyrocketed during the Valhalla fiasco. On top of it, the Olympic gold medal will bump the number of searches on Google.
So, Scheffler can indeed surprise Woods in the near future. Two things will play out in his favor: first, the Tour’s purse size keeps on increasing. Secondly, Tiger Woods’s career earnings are unlikely to go very far from the $120M he has now. All the world no.1 needs to do is maintain the status quo. That, of course, is easier said than done. The good thing is Scottie Scheffler is well aware; he is hungry for more, although his demeanor won’t give that away, and he shows no signs of stopping.
