The early-week vibes from Ponte Vedra weren’t great. The PGA Tour season wasn’t exactly off to a blistering start, and its commissioner was playing defense. The Tour needed a special Sunday at the Players Championship.
It may have just gotten it.
Battered and bruised already by even more players, including World No. 3 and the defending Masters Champion Jon Rahm, packing their bags for LIV Golf, and challenged by questions surrounding its Signature Events, the Tour’s 2024 got off to a funky start.
The Tour’s best remaining players? They weren’t winning. Wyndham Clark was the only player ranked in the Top 50 of the Official World Golf Ranking to win one of the first nine events of the season. Meanwhile, players were pointing out flaws in the Tour’s new designated event model.
When the Tour played host to its flagship event at TPC Sawgrass this week, players, fans and the media alike had more questions than Commissioner Jay Monahan was willing to answer.
How were the negotiations with the Saudi PIF for an investment that was supposed to happen three months ago? Will LIV players be let back on the PGA Tour? Have board members called on you to resign?
Player trust in their embattled leader was clearly eroding.
Then the tournament began and more controversy ensued. Rory McIlroy, the face of the Tour and its most recognizable player, was at the center of a rules kerfuffle that dominated headlines for three days.
The game’s top player, Scottie Scheffler, was in contention through 36 holes, but dealing with a neck injury that threatened to take him out of the event.
Tour Confidential: Scheffler’s epic Players comeback, ‘tricky’ drops, Jay Monahan speaks
But then came Sunday, and…
Salvation! With Scheffler and some of the Tour’s brightest stars delivering a finish for the ages.
From the beginning, it was destined to be a star-studded final round with World No. 6 Xander Schauffele leading reigning U.S. Open winner Clark by a stroke. Another 2023 major winner, Brian Harman, was a shot further back in third, and the 2022 U.S. Open winner, Matt Fitzpatrick was in a tie for fourth.
A distant five back was Scheffler, last week’s winner, who was still dealing with a neck injury, sporting two strips of kinesiology tape under his shirt.
The World No. 1 started his final round slowly, parring the first three holes, falling six back of Schauffele. Then he found a spark when he spun his approach from the left and into the hole for an eagle. He then made five more birdies to surge into a share of the lead, and then one back of Schauffele by the 16th hole.
Scheffler got up and down from one of the small greenside pot bunkers for birdie to regain a share of the lead with Schauffele, but that set of a chain of events leading to golf’s best finish of the year.
