Scottie Scheffler wants to win them all

CASTLE PINES VILLAGE, Colo. – Scottie Scheffler has enough of a lead in the FedExCup that he could have taken this week off and not played the BMW Championship. Skipping the BMW might have left him fresher for next week’s TOUR Championship in Atlanta.

The problem is, Scheffler said at Castle Pines on Wednesday, he not only wants to win the FedExCup, but he also wants to win the BMW. He wanted to win last week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship (solo fourth, three back). He wants to win them all.

“I just love coming out here and competing,” said Scheffler, who comes into this week with a 1,496-point lead over Xander Schauffele atop the FedExCup and would start next week’s TOUR Championship at Atlanta’s East Lake Golf Club with a two-shot lead if he remains the top seed.

The FedExCup Playoffs are never short on meaning, for just getting here brings enormous benefits. The top 50 who make it into the BMW also get guaranteed starts in all eight 2025 Signature Events, with their elevated points and money.

For many, the meaning of the Playoffs is the unpredictability – the surprise-and-delight factor that the playoffs bring to other sports and also golf.

“It's no different than the New York Giants beating the New England Patriots and starting the playoffs 9-7, I think it was … and then winning the Super Bowl,” said Billy Horschel, who was an underdog when he won the 2014 FedExCup. (He’s 19th in the current standings after top-10 finishes in his last three starts, including a T2 at The Open Championship.)

“This is a Playoffs,” Horschel added. “Anything can happen.”

Points are quadrupled in the Playoffs, to 2,000 for the winner, and that can lead to big swings in the FedExCup standings. Viktor Hovland looked iffy for the top 50 into the BMW, which would mean not being able to defend his FedExCup title, but he tied for second at the FedEx St. Jude to move from 57th to 16th. Now he’s right back in the thick of things.

“OK, if I have a couple good weeks, we can still win this thing,” Hovland said of his thoughts last week. “That gives you a little bit more motivation than just kind of showing up and – if this was all over and there wasn't that much I could do to improve my position, that would be a little different.

“I think that's a little exciting,” he added.

For Scheffler, who has gone into the TOUR Championship at East Lake with the lead in each of the last two seasons but watched Rory McIlroy (2022) and Hovland win it all, the FedExCup Playoffs means more competition, which on Wednesday he called “one of the great joys of my life.”

How badly does he want to win the FedExCup? The tears after he lost a six-shot lead and watched McIlroy hoist the trophy two years ago spoke volumes. But good luck getting Scheffler to rank his trophies.

He loved his golden moment at the Olympics (final-round 62) at Le Golf National in Paris, but also his triumphs in the majors (two Masters in three years), THE PLAYERS Championship (the first to successfully defend his title this season), and all six of the PGA TOUR titles he racked up before the calendar flipped to July.

“I kind of figured out this year I don't love playing the week before a major championship,” he said, “and so with East Lake having so much importance in the season-long race, if I was to truly look at my goal at the beginning of the year (as) to win East Lake, this would be a week where I would consider maybe taking off, especially with the points lead I have.

“But at the end of the day,” he added, “I talk about not one trophy being much more important than another. Yeah, I would love to win the FedExCup, but I would also love to win (the BMW). I've never won a Playoffs event, so that would be something that would be really cool to do. I've had good chances to win them and haven't been able to do it.”

Scheffler and Schauffele tee off at 11 a.m. ET on Thursday.