The stats that told the story of the 2021-22 PGA TOUR season

The 2021-22 PGA TOUR season was unforgettable for many reasons.

A season that began with one budding star picking up his third win (Max Homa at the Fortinet Championship) was capped off 11 months later by the biggest final-round comeback in TOUR Championship history (Rory McIlroy, 6 back). What happened in between was unforgettable, too.

These are the stats and notes that best tell the story of the 2021-22 PGA TOUR season.

The breakout superstar

Scottie Scheffler began the year as the highest-ranked player without a PGA TOUR win. Less than five months later, he was a major champion, the FedExCup leader, and the No. 1 player in the world.

On Super Bowl Sunday in Phoenix, he beat reigning FedExCup champ Patrick Cantlay in a playoff for his first PGA TOUR win. When he won the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play just 42 days later, he was tops in the OWGR. It’s by far the fastest a player has gone from winless on the PGA TOUR or DP World Tour to world number one – the previous-fastest sprint to the top came from Tiger Woods, who did it in 252 days.

Scheffler made his first start as No. 1 at the Masters, the first player to do that since Ian Woosnam in 1991, and like Woosnam, Scheffler won. It was his first major title and fourth win in six PGA TOUR starts – the first time anyone had gone four-for-six since Jason Day in 2015. (Day’s run also included his first major win, at the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits, and an ascent to world number one.)

The most recent player, before Scheffler, to collect his fourth win of the season at the Masters: Arnold Palmer in 1960.

The scoring records

Before the Sentry Tournament of Champions, there had never been a 72-hole PGA TOUR event where two players finished regulation at 30 under par or lower. The week of the Sentry, there were three. Jon Rahm made 32 birdies, tying the record for a 72-hole tournament, and he didn’t even win.

At the Sony Open in Hawaii the following week Hideki Matsuyama and Russell Henley were tied through four rounds with a total score of 257. When Matsuyama won the playoff, Henley received the dubious honor of lowest 72-hole total in PGA TOUR history for a player who did not win.

Sebastian Muñoz became the first player in TOUR history to record two rounds of 60 in the same season – he got his first at The RSM Classic, and second at the AT&T Byron Nelson.

At the PGA Championship at Southern Hills, Justin Thomas played his last 13 holes (including the playoff against Will Zalatoris) in 6 under to win. He was seven shots off the lead to start the day. The comeback tied the largest by a winner in PGA Championship history (John Mahaffey in 1978), and was the biggest in a men’s major since Paul Lawrie was 10 back at the 1999 Open Championship.

Thomas’ win was not just his second major, but also his 15th PGA TOUR title. Since World War II, only five other players have won 15 PGA TOUR events, including multiple majors, before the age of 30: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy.

All four men’s major winners in 2022 were under 30, the first time that’s happened since the inception of the Masters in 1934. Players in their 20s had previously won three of the four majors 17 different times.

The right mix of man and tournament/golf course

After two years of cancelations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the fans at the RBC Canadian Open were primed for a thrilling week. The players delivered. In the final round, Justin Rose flirted with 59 but settled for 60, becoming the first European player in PGA TOUR history with multiple rounds of 60 or better in his career. Thomas, McIlroy and Tony Finau were electric, shooting a combined 20 under par. When McIlroy came out on top, it marked the first time in his PGA TOUR career he had successfully defended a title.

Nine years after winning the U.S. Amateur with his little brother on the bag at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, Matt Fitzpatrick returned to claim his first career major victory. It marked just the second time in men’s golf history that a player won the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Open at the same course – Nicklaus also did it at Pebble Beach. Fitzpatrick hit 17 greens in regulation in the final round at Brookline, becoming just the third major winner in the last 30 years to hit 17 or more GIR on Sunday of a major win.

The breakout rookie

Cameron Young’s seven top-three finishes on the season included the PGA Championship (T-3) and The Open Championship (2nd). As well as he played all season, though, it did not include a victory. Young is the first player to have seven or more top-three finishes but no wins in a single PGA TOUR season since Payne Stewart in 1993. Young wound up with more than $6.5M in official earnings – the most in TOUR history for a rookie and the most for a player in a season without a win.

Sahith Theegala, the other rookie to make the TOUR Championship, shot the most rounds in the 60s on TOUR (55). Davis Riley (6 top-10 finishes), Chad Ramey (won Corales Puntacana Championship) and Tom Kim (both winners this season), help make this rookie class one of the strongest in years.

Feel-good win of the season

Arguably the most cathartic win was by perpetual major contender Will Zalatoris in a playoff at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. By outlasting Sepp Straka, Zalatoris banked his first PGA TOUR title in the first stop of the three-week FedExCup Playoffs. His incredible consistency in the majors early in his career doesn’t happen often: at the U.S. Open, he picked up his sixth top-10 finish in just his ninth major start. The last player to do that was Antonio Cerda, an Open Championship fixture in the 1950s.

When Zalatoris got the win at TPC Southwind he was 14th in the Official World Golf Ranking. That marked the highest World Ranking by any American player at the time of his first TOUR win, just ahead of Scheffler at TPC Scottsdale earlier in the year (15th).

The winners who overcame calamity

The PGA TOUR has been tracking hole-by-hole scoring data for 40 seasons. From 1983 through July of this year there were more than 1,700 official stroke play events contested, and never was a tournament won by a player who started the week with triple bogey or worse.

Then it happened twice in August.

At the Wyndham Championship, Tom Kim began his week with a quadruple bogey. His long, incredible climb back up the leaderboard – which included a front nine 27 in the final round – ended in a runaway five-stroke victory. Three weeks later in Atlanta, Rory McIlroy – who was already ceding six “Starting Strokes” to Scheffler – opened his tournament with triple bogey and went on to win.

The sneakiest, most dramatic improvement

The most impressive turnaround for McIlroy didn’t come at the TOUR Championship, or not just there, anyway. It was a facet of his game that went from burden to brilliant over just a few months.

Through the Masters, McIlroy was struggling with his wedges: From 50 to 125 yards away, he ranked 208th of 209 qualified players in proximity to the hole (24 feet, 1 inch). From his next start – the Wells Fargo Championship – through the end of the year, he completely turned that around. His average of 14 feet, 1 inch from that point through the end of the season was tops on the PGA TOUR.