ATLANTA – Scottie Scheffler cautioned reporters to put an asterisk adjacent his lead after Day 1 at the Tour Championship — a seven-stroke advantage partially thanks to his starting-strokes total at the finale — but there is nothing parenthetical about how he hopes to put an exclamation point on an already historic season.
Following a bogey at the first hole for the second time in three days, Scheffler was quintessential Scheffler with six birdies over his final 17 holes for a 5-under 66 and a five-stroke lead over Collin Morikawa with one round remaining in the 2024 FedExCup season.
There is nothing surprising about Scheffler’s path to the top of the season-ending leaderboard. He’s second in strokes gained: off the tee, second in strokes gained: tee to green and second in driving distance. That he’s also second in strokes gained: putting is enough to pull all the air from the East Lake locker room.
Trailing by five strokes, or more, is challenging enough at golf’s highest level, but to spot the game’s undisputed best player that kind of lead can understandably feel insurmountable.
“I need to make a lot of birdies. He’s the best golfer on the planet. He’s really good with leads,” figured Sam Burns, who is a dozen shots behind Scheffler. “It’s not a great thing for us.”
Long-time Tour Championship observers will point out that Scheffler had a similarly commanding lead heading into the final turn at the 2022 finale only to squander that advantage with a closing 73 to finish tied for second place. But this is not that Scottie.
“It’s really up to him, to be honest. I have to play out of my ‘beep’ to sniff [the lead],” said Xander Schauffele, who began the week two shots behind Scheffler in the starting-strokes format and is now 10 shots back.
An optimist would point out Scheffler has closed out 7-of-13 54-hole leads in his Tour career but that conveniently skips past the more relevant statistic that he’s 4-for-5 this season with 54-hole advantages.
In signature Scottie style, he had no interest in looking back to that ’22 finale or any of his other records at East Lake. Instead, he leaned into the clichés that have served him so well.
“Keep doing what I’ve been doing, staying in the moment, staying patient out there,” Scheffler said when asked what he needed to do on Sunday to get over the Tour Championship hump. “I feel like I’ve done a lot of stuff well and played solid, so I’m looking forward to the challenge of trying to finish off the tournament tomorrow and continuing to do that.”
Morikawa is best positioned to catch Scheffler and social media was quick to point out that without Scheffler’s starting-strokes advantage, Morikawa would be leading by a stroke — but that peace of mind won’t make Sunday any easier.
“I mean, it’s going to be very hard, but I believe in myself that I can do it. Five shots is a lot, but two-shot swings happen. I think I’ve seen a couple over the past few days,” Morikawa said. “I’ve just got to play my game. I’ve got to go low. I know that. Hopefully I’ve got that in me today. I’ve got 18 holes left to the season. I keep talking about that, but I’m going to put everything I have into these next 24 hours.”
Some players opined the last few weeks that Scheffler — with his six Tour victories that include a major (Masters), The Players Championship and, additionally, an Olympic gold medal – was already good enough to claim the circuit’s Player of the Year award, but in the career scorecard it might be Schauffele, with two majors, who had the better season.
A FedExCup title, which would be the world No. 1’s first, and $25 million in disposable income, probably doesn’t change that math but it certainly would remove even a hint of ambiguity from the room that Scheffler is in a class by himself.