MEMPHIS — Scottie Scheffler won the Masters, five other PGA Tour events and the Olympic gold medal this season. Winning the FedEx Cup title would sure put an exclamation point on his season, wouldn’t it?
Not necessarily. Or so says Scottie Scheffler.
Far and away the leader in the FedEx Cup standings heading into the playoffs, which begin Thursday at TPC Southwind with the FedEx St. Jude Championship, Scheffler would like to win the FedEx Cup title—something he has failed to do the previous two years when he entered the Tour Championship ranked first in the standings.
But let’s not get carried away here.
“I don't really think about exclamation point or anything like that, but definitely want to win the FedEx Cup,” he said Wednesday before warming up to throw a little cold water on the topic of what is billed as a season-long race. It’s more of a season-long race to get to the Tour Championship and then it becomes something else.
Scheffler has amassed a staggering lead in the points standings over two-time major winner Xander Schauffele, and barring something unusual occurring, he almost assuredly will be leading again after this week’s event and the BMW Championship. For that effort, he will be rewarded with a two-shot advantage over his nearest pursuer when he arrives at East Lake Golf club in Atlanta.
“It's quoted as the season-long race, but at the end of the day it really all comes down to East Lake,” said the world’s No. 1 player. “I talked about it the last few years. I think it's silly. You can't call it a season-long race and have it come down to one tournament.
“Hypothetically, we get to East Lake and my neck flares up and it doesn't heal the way it did at the Players [where he battled a neck injury the first few rounds]. I finish 30th in the FedEx Cup because I had to withdraw from the last tournament? Is that really the season-long race? No. It is what it is.
“It's a fun tournament. I don't really consider it the season-long race like I think the way it's called. But you've got to figure out a way to strike a balance between it being a good TV product and it still being a season-long race. Right now, I don't know exactly how the ratings are or anything like that, but I know for a fact you can't really quite call it the season-long race when it comes down to one stroke play tournament on the same golf course each year.”
Collin Morikawa, who comes into the playoffs ranked fourth behind Scheffler, Schauffele and Rory McIroy didn’t necessarily give a ringing endorsement either to the staggered-start scoring format of the Tour Championship.
“I've gone back and forth about it,” said Morikawa, ranked sixth in the world. “I think with any sport, playoffs are playoffs, and sometimes the best teams … a lot of the times the best teams don't win. What's crazy about our sport is there's so much fluctuation and there's so much variabilities that you don't know how someone is going to play. The best player in the world could have a bad week, and it's like, man, that week mattered more than others.
“I don't think it's a perfect system. I think we've got to down to, guys can complain, this, that. If you're the best and you want to show up, you have to show up, especially at the Tour Championship. That's just how things work. There's a lot on the line, but that's what's so tough about our sport.”
Scheffler admits he hasn’t had his “best stuff” at East Lake, where the course has undergone a renovation since last year. “It may give me some new vibes around there,” he said with a grin. In the end, however, a change in the golf course isn't as important as a change in performance.
“Gotta make more birdies,” he said. “The answer is always make more birdies.”