“I feel like I’ve been playing some good golf,” said a satisfied Scottie Scheffler after clinching his fifth win of the season in the 2024 PGA Tour calendar. No one can refute him, especially after looking at him dishing out the best-ever performance of his career and still going strong more than halfway into the year’s schedule. And as he strives forward, the golf world naturally compares him to one of the greatest to ever play in the sport – Tiger Woods.
At 48 years old, Woods himself boasts 82 PGA Tour wins, including the 15 victories he secured through major championships. Although Scheffler only has 11 triumphs in the men’s circuit, alongside 2 major wins, he has proven himself more than capable of emerging victorious in the league with his scintillating gameplay. One can’t help but wonder if he would actually be able to match Woods’s legacy, especially after his recent feat!
The Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR) was established on April 6th, 1986, following the need for a worldwide system to replace the US PGA TOUR Money List, which initially decided the best players in the world. Fast forward to 1996, the points counted towards the whole arrangement were altered from a 3-year rolling system to a 2-year rolling system. Since then, only two golfers have managed to average more than 16 points: Woods and Scheffler.
The current No. 1 golfer had a points average of 15.2952 on the world rankings after his T2 finish at the Charles Schwab Challenge. But his triumph at the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday has pushed him to a total of 754.78093 points while averaging a whopping 16.4083 after just 13 starts in 2024. This comes after he clinched the No. 1 spot for a total of 90 weeks, with 56 out of them being consecutive ones.
The 15-time major champ, on the other hand, had achieved the feat many times in his career which saw him topping the OWGR for a total of 683 weeks and consecutively for 281 weeks. He averaged 19.98 in 1999, 29.40 in 2000, 17.16 in 2005, 20.41 in 2006, and 19.61 in 2007. Nosferatu, consequently, dubbed the legend as a non-human while calling Scheffler the “only human No. 1 to reach 16 points since the OWGR switched to a 2-year rolling period.”
The 1997 Masters champ sure did overshadow the 2024 Masters winner when it came to the stats. Besides, it’s not as if that was the only number in which Scottie Scheffler had found himself close to rivaling the Hall of Famer.
Scheffler rakes in win after win on the men’s circuit
The golfer managed to dominate over the likes of the other PGA Tour players including Woods this season by finishing a total of 12 times in the top-10. He did so from a total of 13 starts while raking in 5 wins, two T2 placements, and a third-place finish. That’s not all. His tally of five victories has helped him join Woods, Jason Day, Jordan Spieth, and Justin Thomas, all of whom (except Woods) have a personal best of five wins in a single season.
He is, thus, closely inching towards the likes of Nick Price (6 wins in 1994), Tom Watson (7 in 1980), Tiger Woods (6 in 2005 and 2009, 7 in 2007, 8 in 1999 and 2006, and 9 in 2000), and Vijay Singh (9 in 2004), all of whom were in a league of their own back then. It sure does feel as if the 2-time major champ has set his eyes on breaking the legend’s stats once again.
Is a top-10 contest in the making between Woods and Scheffler?
Woods has played 375 PGA Tour events throughout his 28-year-long career. And out of the starts he made at the same, the pro has garnered a total of 199 top-10 placements, not to mention 163 of them being him finishing the tournament inside the top-5 with 82 wins.
On the contrary, Scheffler has played in a total of 124 tournaments on the men’s circuit, placing himself inside the top 10 55 times. Out of these 55 placements, he has finished in the top 5 a total of 41 times, earning a whopping $66,589,782 in prize money. In contrast, Mr. T tops the career money list by a huge margin, at a figure of $120,999,166. Although the current No. 1 is far behind the legend, he has managed to catch up halfway with just one-third of Woods’s starts. This seems to hint at the golfer closing in on the 15-time major champ.
The two are, thus, miles apart when it comes to stats. However, Scottie Scheffler appears to be slowly closing in on the Hall of Famer and his figures. But he would need to work hard and strive even harder to equal the 82-time PGA Tour champ’s numbers, which he achieved over 28 years of excellence on the greens.
