Missed gimmes, long bombs and a wild 2024 FedExCup season

Robby Shelton holed out from 258 yards, a rare albatross at the Valspar Championship.

Rory McIlroy missed from 30 inches, agony at the U.S. Open.

Because, well, golf.

Not everything this season was about Scottie Scheffler (although we’ll get to him), and so, amid today’s talk of history and dominance, we pause now to enter other concerns into the historical record.

For example, we saw two 59s and a 49 on the PGA TOUR this year.

Cameron Young shot the first 59 on TOUR in four years at the Travelers Championship, and Hayden Springer hit the magic number at the John Deere Classic two weeks later. They were the 13th and 14th sub-60 scores on TOUR.

Nick Dunlap shot +49 to capture the Barracuda Championship (Modified Stableford scoring), his second win. At his first, The American Express in January, the University of Alabama sophomore became the first amateur to win on TOUR in 33 years.

There were some notable 44s, as well, as Adam Scott, 44, returned to the TOUR Championship after a one-year absence (he shot 67 on Sunday to finish T4) and Justin Rose, 44, got through 36-hole qualifying and finished second only to Xander Schauffele at The Open Championship in sub-optimal weather at Troon.

In fact, San Diego State product Schauffele (68, T4, 11 back at East Lake) double-majored this year. His lip-in birdie at the PGA Championship at Valhalla gave him his first major victory and first TOUR win in nearly two years. Then – not one to let the grass grow under his feet – he nabbed his second major at The Open.

Nick Taylor won the WM Phoenix Open and Taylor Pendrith THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson. If International Presidents Cup Team Captain Mike Weir trots out a Team Taylor at Royal Montreal, Sept. 26-29, perhaps a certain pop star, last name Swift, could sing their walk-up song. (Only Pendrith made it to East Lake, where he shot a final-round 66 to finish T14.)

Davis Riley won the Charles Schwab Challenge for his first TOUR victory; Cam Davis won the Rocket Mortgage Classic for the second time in four years; and Davis Thompson won the John Deere Classic the next week. If those guys also wind up in Royal Montreal, perhaps we could call it the Davis Cup. (Wait, no – we can’t call it that.)

Meanwhile, Ludvig Åberg, Patrick Cantlay, Collin Morikawa, Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas racked up a total of zero wins between them, which in January would’ve seemed preposterous.

Russ Cochran, 65, made his first TOUR start in 11 years at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans. Well-rested, Cochran surprised and excelled with his much-younger partner, Eric Cole, as they missed the cut by two. (Cole’s caddie is Cochran’s son, Reed, and both wanted to get Russ his 600th TOUR start.)

Speaking of New Orleans, tournament newbies McIlroy and Shane Lowry sampled the local fare, got ovations in restaurants, and sang Journey’s “Don’t stop believin’” in victory. (Well, Rory did, anyway.) In other words, the team that had the most fun won – in that order – and it was impossible not to smile along with them amid all that good NOLA juju.

Team McILowry was so close they each finished T9 at East Lake, McIlroy finishing with a 66, Lowry, who was making his first TOUR Championship start, a 68.

It was also a year of devastating tragedy. Grayson Murray took his own life in the same season as his incredible victory in a playoff at the Sony Open in Hawaii.

“We're following through on his family's wish that we be kind to one another,” PGA TOUR Commissioner Jay Monahan said at East Lake. “Grayson's family remains an important permanent part of the PGA TOUR family, and we are working together to continue to honor him by supporting his foundation, and especially as we get to Hawaii.”

Having earned TOUR cards via the DP World Tour top 10, Matthieu Pavon (Farmers Insurance Open) and Robert MacIntyre (RBC Canadian Open, Genesis Scottish Open) proved themselves on the PGA TOUR – if not always in America.

“I just came with, like, very low expectation,” Pavon said, “and this is what happened.”

Each finished T17 at East Lake, with MacIntyre closing in 64, Pavon 67.

Schauffele, MacIntyre, Dunlap, Hideki Matsuyama (The Genesis Invitational, FedEx St. Jude Championship), and McIlroy (Zurich Classic of New Orleans, Wells Fargo Championship) were two-time winners, though in the case of Matsuyama (Olympic bronze medal), it was sort of three.

Keegan Bradley reminded that it’s a game of inches as the last man into the BMW Championship at Castle Pines – by a mere 17 FedExCup points – won to go from 50th to fourth in the FedExCup standings. He shot 68 on Sunday to finish T21 at East Lake.

In the end, though, Scheffler, incandescently brilliant, was too much for the others to handle.

He was bearded; clean-shaven; and somewhere in between.

He rocked the red cardigan; hit the green jacket/plaid jacket double; and was solid gold.

To look back on 2024 is to contemplate all the ways Scheffler shone, especially after he shot a final-round 67 to win the TOUR Championship and FedExCup at East Lake on Sunday.

“It's a pretty special feeling to be finally holding the trophy,” he said after winning by four.

Was anyone surprised? He won six times before July, the first player to accomplish that feat since Arnold Palmer in 1962. Scheffler became the first to successfully defend his title at THE PLAYERS Championship; won for the second time in three years at the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard and the Masters Tournament; and was ranked world No. 1 all year. Only Schauffele came anywhere close, and even that is debatable.

“Scottie is so ho-hum,” Schauffele said. “Genuinely a really good dude. He is hard to get mad at or not like or you know, try and paint his image in your head of like, I need to beat this guy.”

Scheffler played so well, so often, that it looked especially strange when he was off. At the PGA Championship in Louisville, he shot a distracted third-round 73 and finished T8. He got a very short haircut and finished T41 at the U.S. Open at Pinehurst. He struggled with the altitude, or something, at the BMW Championship (T33) in Denver.

But those seven PGA TOUR victories, the FedExCup trophy, the Olympic gold medal, the 15 top-10 finishes in 18 starts going into Atlanta – Scheffler, who along with wife Meredith became a new parent to baby Bennett on May 8, all but owned this FedExCup season, title and deed.

That he should hoist the FedExCup trophy? It’s only right.