The Five: Season’s biggest storylines into TOUR Championship

It’s the final leg of the three-event FedExCup Playoffs, so it’s a good time to assess a rollicking 2024 season thus far.

The FedExCup champion will be crowned at this week’s TOUR Championship at a restored East Lake – using a FedExCup Starting Strokes format for the sixth year – with top seed Scottie Scheffler (10-under) carrying a two-stroke edge over Xander Schauffele (8-under) into Thursday’s first round in Atlanta.

Scheffler and Schauffele have taken center stage in the PGA TOUR Player of the Year race – would you rather have six victories including a Masters and PLAYERS (plus an Olympic gold medal), or major victories at the PGA Championship and The Open? It’s a spirited debate with contrasting opinions on both sides, and the TOUR Championship will offer a final piece of context before players cast their ballots.

Viktor Hovland returns to defend his title at East Lake, after moving from No. 57 to No. 17 on the FedExCup across the first two Playoffs events. Hovland starts the week at 2-under, eight strokes off the lead, with all 30 players within 10 shots. As No. 30 seed Justin Thomas (even-par) referenced on X, we’re saying there’s a chance indeed.

Andrew Green’s comprehensive restoration of East Lake will have players essentially learning a new course this week, revamping their yardage books with new hole lengths, new trouble off the fairway and new angles into greens. It’s a fitting challenge for the TOUR Championship, the final leg of the race for the FedExCup.

Here are the five biggest storylines of the 2024 season into the TOUR Championship.

Scottie Scheffler’s dominance

A year ago, it somehow felt like Scheffler underachieved despite taking the No. 1 seed at East Lake – his putter seemed to hold him back from unrestrained dominance.

Well, Scheffler improved his putting for 2024 and his dominance has reached new heights. Scheffler became the first player to earn six TOUR titles before July since Arnold Palmer in 1962, with victories at the Masters, THE PLAYERS Championship and four Signature Events. (He then added Olympic gold with a final-round 62 in Paris.)

In a five-event stretch from the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard through the RBC Heritage, he lost to just one player – Stephan Jaeger, by a stroke, at the Texas Children’s Houston Open. Scheffler leads the TOUR in Scoring Average, Birdie Average, Greens in Regulation, Strokes Gained: Approach the Green and Strokes Gained: Total, to name a few.

Scheffler, 28, is now a 12-time PGA TOUR winner and not showing any signs of slowing down, his combination of generational ball-striking and well-rounded life perspective leads one to believe that we could see a few more years of this Scheffler.

Regardless of the future – of which Scheffler doesn’t much concern himself anyway – his 2024 season is certainly one of the decade’s great efforts in professional golf.

Xander Schauffele’s breakthrough

The even-keeled San Diegan preaches process and perspective, claiming that he doesn’t allow the result to cloud his thinking. Having entered 2024 with 11 top-10s in major championships without a victory, though, one could stand to reason Schauffele heard the whispers creeping in.

It all changed at the PGA Championship at Valhalla, where Schauffele made birdie on the 72nd hole for a one-stroke win and his first major. Two months later, he doubled down with a final-round 65 for an emphatic victory at The 152nd Open Championship at Royal Troon. No longer among the “best players without a major” conversation, the chatter shifted: Could he supplant Scheffler, somehow, for 2024 Player of the Year?

It might not get that far, but the conversation is a sign of Schauffele’s breakthrough this summer, leading to fair questions regarding how good he can get. Always an above-average putter, Schauffele ascended into the top 10 in Strokes Gained: Putting last season and has stayed there in 2024. He’s second to Scheffler in Strokes Gained: Total, but the gap between Schauffele (2.179) and No. 3 Hideki Matsuyama (1.485) is greater than the gulf between Matsuyama and No. 22 Andrew Novak (0.812).

That’s a sign of the separation between Scheffler/Schauffele and the rest. Their names might be confused at times, but their shared status in the game – elite – warrants no confusion.

Nick Dunlap’s ascension

Golf’s youth movement is in full swing, with several under-25 players asserting themselves in 2024 including Ludvig Åberg, Akshay Bhatia and rising Florida State junior Luke Clanton.

Nick Dunlap had the banner season of them all.

Dunlap, 20, celebrated the New Year as a sophomore at the University of Alabama, rooming with teammate Jonathan Griz and planning to lead the Crimson Tide in the pursuit of a national title. Then Dunlap won The American Express in January, becoming the first amateur to win on TOUR in 33 years, and turned pro shortly thereafter. He took a few months to acclimate to life on TOUR, justifiably, then won again at the Barracuda Championship in July. Dunlap’s inner strength was on full display at the final hole of the Playoffs-opening FedEx St. Jude Championship, needing a par to finish inside the top 50 on the FedExCup and qualify for next season’s Signature Events. TPC Southwind’s par-4 18th, with water hugging the hole’s entire left side, had witnessed many disasters in the previous few hours. Dunlap made a comfortable par, completing the leap from college sophomore to top-50 TOUR player in less than eight months.

It was a meteoric rise, the likes of which we hadn’t seen in a while (Jordan Spieth in 2013 comes to mind, but even then Spieth “only” won once). The Scheffler/Schauffele mountain is a slippery one to climb, but Dunlap has the tools to perhaps ascend it.

Viktor Hovland’s confounding season

As the TOUR Championship returns to East Lake, it’s reasonable to think back to Viktor Hovland’s five-stroke victory a season ago – closing with three straight birdies to seize the FedExCup in glittering fashion. It came on the strength of a win at the prior week’s BMW Championship at Olympia Fields, and it seemed to validate the long-simmering suspicion that the cerebral Norwegian was on the fast track to superstardom.

Then came the inevitable search to get better, an itch among professional golfers to which not even Tiger Woods was immune. Hovland used a plethora of available tools, some directly golf-related and some not as much, in the search to find that extra edge. The results have been uneven at times. The Oklahoma State alum finished third at the PGA Championship, an encouraging sign, but he entered the FedExCup Playoffs at No. 57 in the season-long standings without any top-10 finishes aside from the PGA. He was on the brink of losing the chance to defend his title at either the BMW Championship or TOUR Championship.

Hovland’s talent emerged just in time at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, where he shared second place at TPC Southwind to vault to No. 16 on the FedExCup, safely inside the top 30 despite a middling T26 at the 50-man BMW Championship. He starts the TOUR Championship at 2-under and needs to make up eight strokes for a chance at a repeat FedExCup crown. But he has a tee time at East Lake, and any field including Hovland is one where he can factor.

“I was super pumped just to come back and turn a pretty bad year into an okay year, making it here,” Hovland said Tuesday. “I'm just kind of pumped that the curve is trending upwards, and I've just got to ride that wave and keep it going.”

DP World Tour graduates’ success

Ten DP World Tour players earned dual membership on the 2024 PGA TOUR via the season-long Race to Dubai in 2023. By and large, they’ve proved they belong at this level, with two (Matthieu Pavon and Robert MacIntyre) qualifying for the 30-player TOUR Championship and thereby securing a two-year TOUR exemption through 2026.

France native Pavon was perhaps still a curiosity as he arrived at the Sony Open in Hawaii for his TOUR debut as a member, on the strength of four straight closing birdies at the 2023 DP World Tour Championship to cement his TOUR status, sporting an inspiring tattoo and eclectic backstory. Then he contended in Hawaii (T7) and won the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines two weeks later, playing a bold approach from the thick rough left of the 18th fairway and converting the winning birdie. Pavon enters the TOUR Championship at No. 24 on the FedExCup standings, nine strokes back of Scheffler but with a puncher’s chance at the FedExCup.

MacIntyre authored perhaps the year’s feel-good story in June, winning his first TOUR title at the RBC Canadian Open with his dad Dougie on the bag – a greenskeeper at Glencruitten Golf Club in Oban, Scotland. The elder MacIntyre was only there because his son was between caddies, as a spot starter of sorts, and the emotional scene on the 18th green at Hamilton Golf & Country Club will be etched in feel-good TOUR lore. Just a month later, MacIntyre doubled down with perhaps an even better hero’s tale, winning his national open at the Genesis Scottish Open. He’s No. 20 on the FedExCup into the TOUR Championship, eight back of Scheffler at 2-under.

Other DP World Tour class members who have factored include New Zealand’s Ryan Fox, Japan’s Ryo Hisatsune, Finland’s Sami Valimaki and France’s Victor Perez. It’s a robust international crew, and if the past is precedent, expect the next DP World Tour class (finalized later in the fall) to bring the same talent and flair.