Scottie Scheffler Does It Again: Recapping the 2026 PGA Tour Season and Another Year of Golf Chaos

Scottie Scheffler is your FedExCup champion again, and somehow the guy who spent a good portion of the summer being discussed as having a “down year” just finished the season by reminding everyone that the gap between him and the rest of professional golf is still very real.

Scheffler entered the final round of the Tour Championship at East Lake three shots behind Viktor Hovland, who had played some of the best golf of the week and carried a one-shot lead through 54 holes. Scheffler then did what Scheffler does. He shot a final-round 66, finished at 16-under, won by three over Hovland and claimed the $10 million first prize. The win gave Scheffler his second FedExCup title and made him just the third player ever, joining Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy, to win multiple FedExCups. It also pushed him past Tiger on the PGA Tour’s official career earnings list.

That last part obviously comes with an enormous asterisk because prize money now is completely different than it was during Tiger’s prime, and Scheffler himself has basically acknowledged that comparing the two eras financially is ridiculous. Tiger is one of the main reasons these guys are making the money they make today. But regardless of how inflated modern purses have become, you don’t accidentally reach this level of sustained dominance. Scheffler is 30 years old, already has more than 20 PGA Tour victories, two FedExCups, multiple majors and has spent what feels like an eternity as the No. 1 player in the world.

What makes Sunday even more impressive is how his week started. Scheffler came into East Lake still recovering from hand, foot and mouth disease, something I genuinely never thought I would type in a golf recap. He had dealt with blisters on his hands and entered the Tour Championship saying he was around 95 percent recovered. Then he went 65-67-66-66 over four rounds and walked out with another $10 million. Apparently even contracting something normally associated with toddlers is not enough to stop this guy.

Hovland deserves credit because for three days it looked like he might finally get another signature postseason win. He opened 64-66-65 and led at 15-under heading into Sunday, but the final round got away from him. Hovland shot 72 and finished three behind Scheffler at 13-under. Ryan Gerard, one of the biggest surprises of the week, finished another shot back at 12-under after also shooting 72 Sunday. Alex Fitzpatrick, Jacob Bridgeman and Min Woo Lee tied for fourth at 11-under.

For Hovland, the loss is frustrating, but I actually think his season ends on an encouraging note. He spent plenty of time over the last few years tinkering with his swing and openly admitting that he didn't always know where his game was going. In 2026, he won the Travelers Championship by beating Scheffler in a playoff and then came within one Sunday round of winning the FedExCup. He still hasn't won a major and missed the cut in three of the four this year, but when Hovland is right, there are very few players in the world who can hit the ball like him.

And that really sums up the 2026 PGA Tour season as a whole. It was weird. It was unpredictable. The established superstars were still there, but they didn't completely own the majors the way we've grown accustomed to seeing. Instead, we got one of the strangest and most entertaining major seasons in recent memory.

Rory McIlroy kicked off the major calendar by defending his Masters title at Augusta. After finally completing the career Grand Slam in 2025, Rory came back one year later and won another green jacket, finishing at 12-under and holding off a loaded leaderboard that included Scheffler and Cameron Young. It was only Rory’s lone PGA Tour win of the season, but when your one win is the Masters, I don't think anybody is exactly sending condolences.

Rory's season was interesting because the conversation around him has changed completely. For years, everything centered around whether he would ever win another major and complete the Slam. Now he has done it, defended at Augusta and essentially reached a stage where he can choose his schedule more carefully. He played only 13 PGA Tour events this season, made the cut in all 13, finished runner-up at the Genesis and third at the BMW Championship, but there is clearly less desperation surrounding every Rory start now. He has talked openly about wanting to play fewer stretches of consecutive tournaments and balance golf with family life. That feels like the natural evolution of a player who already accomplished the thing that haunted him for more than a decade.

Then came Aaron Rai at the PGA Championship.

If someone had told me in January that one of the four major champions this season would be Aaron Rai, I would have asked what sportsbook they were using and what his odds were. Rai entered Sunday at Aronimink three shots back and then fired a final-round 65 to win by three over Jon Rahm and Alex Smalley at 9-under. The victory made him the first English-born player in more than a century to win the PGA Championship and gave him his first major.

That was probably the biggest shock of the major season. Not because Rai isn't a very good golfer. He absolutely is. But he wasn't one of the names everyone spent the previous three months discussing. The leaderboard featured Rahm, Scheffler, McIlroy, Justin Thomas, Ludvig Åberg and Xander Schauffele, and somehow the guy wearing two gloves and using iron covers walked out with the Wanamaker Trophy. That's golf.

Then Wyndham Clark showed up at Shinnecock and reminded everyone that his first U.S. Open wasn't some random hot week.

Clark won the 2026 U.S. Open at 4-under, becoming a two-time U.S. Open champion after also winning at Los Angeles Country Club in 2023. Shinnecock was exactly what a U.S. Open course should be: difficult, uncomfortable and capable of making the best players in the world look like they should have stayed home. Scheffler finished tied for fourth at even par, Rory finished at 6-over, and Clark survived the carnage better than everyone else.

Clark quietly had one of the best complete seasons on Tour. He won the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, won the U.S. Open and then won the BMW Championship during the playoffs. That gave him three victories for the year and six career PGA Tour wins. He also produced six top-five finishes in 17 made cuts and entered East Lake ranked third in the FedExCup standings.

Clark is an interesting player because people still don't seem to fully embrace him. Part of that is probably personality, and part of it goes back to the incident at Oakmont in 2025 when he damaged a locker after missing the U.S. Open cut. He apologized, paid for the damage, donated to charity and went through anger-management counseling, but he's acknowledged that he often hears louder cheers for the players he's trying to beat. At the BMW Championship, he nearly coughed up a five-shot lead before Rory tied him late, and Clark responded with massive birdies on 16 and 17 to win by three. Whether people root for him or not, the guy has become one of the best big-event players in golf.

Then we got Ryan Fox at Royal Birkdale.

Maybe the best pure finish of any major this year.

Fox entered the final hole tied for the lead with Cameron Young and faced the hardest hole on the golf course. He absolutely smoked his drive, hit his approach to 12 feet and buried the birdie putt on 18 to win the Open Championship by one at 10-under. He became only the second New Zealander ever to win the Claret Jug and did it by making four birdies over his final six holes.

That's the type of ending people remember forever. No playoff. No opponent making a mistake to hand it to him. Fox walked onto the 72nd tee knowing what he needed and made birdie on the hardest hole on the course. Cameron Young had already shot 64 and was preparing for a playoff. Fox basically said no thanks.

The four majors ended up producing four very different champions: McIlroy defending at Augusta, Rai breaking through at the PGA, Clark becoming a two-time U.S. Open winner and Fox producing the moment of his career at Birkdale. PGA Tour coverage itself called it one of the strangest major seasons in recent memory, and that's a pretty fair assessment.

Which brings us back to Scheffler.

Because the funniest part of his season is that it was somehow simultaneously disappointing and incredible.

Scheffler started his year by winning The American Express, his 20th PGA Tour victory. At the time, it looked like we were heading toward another completely absurd season where he might win six, seven or eight times. Instead, the wins suddenly stopped coming. He finished second at the Masters, second at the RBC Heritage, second at the Cadillac Championship, tied fourth at the U.S. Open, lost to Hovland in a playoff at the Travelers, tied fourth at The Open and then finished second at the 3M Open.

By late July, Scheffler had only one win.

For a normal player that would be a strong season.

For Scottie Scheffler it had people asking what was wrong.

Think about how insane that is.

This guy could finish second four times, top-five three majors and remain No. 1 in the world, and everyone is looking around asking why he isn't winning enough. That is Tiger-level expectations. Not Tiger-level career accomplishments, because nobody should be having that conversation yet, but the expectations are becoming similar. Scheffler has reached the point where simply contending every week is considered disappointing.

Then August arrived.

Scheffler won the FedEx St. Jude Championship by eight shots. Eight. That was his 21st career PGA Tour victory and made him the third-youngest player since 1970 to reach that number behind only Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Then, despite finishing tied for 12th at the BMW and dealing with illness heading into East Lake, he finished the season by winning the Tour Championship and his second FedExCup.

So the “down year” ended with three victories, a FedExCup, a second at the Masters, top-four finishes in three majors and another season as the No. 1 player in the world. Give me a break. He's probably going to win Player of the Year again too. And if he does, it would be his fifth straight.

That doesn't mean everyone else disappeared. Cameron Young had a huge season, winning The Players Championship and the Cadillac Championship before finishing runner-up at The Open. Matt Fitzpatrick won three times and remained one of the most consistent players on Tour. Chris Gotterup also won three events and continued establishing himself as one of the better young American players. Heading into the final stretch of the regular season, all three were legitimately in the Player of the Year conversation because Scheffler had not yet made his late-season run.

Young's season in particular feels important. For years he was the guy everybody kept saying was too good not to win more. In 2026, the wins finally came. Taking The Players at TPC Sawgrass immediately changes how a player is viewed, and then finishing one shot behind Fox at Royal Birkdale gave Young his best major result. It feels less like we're waiting for Cameron Young to become elite and more like he finally has.

Justin Thomas also deserves mention. He didn't win a major, but he repeatedly showed up near the top of big-event leaderboards and finished tied fourth at the PGA Championship. Ludvig Åberg remained one of the game's most talented young players, sharing fourth at Aronimink, although he still hasn't made the leap from “future major champion” to actual major champion. Jon Rahm, meanwhile, reminded everyone at the PGA Championship that regardless of the PGA Tour/LIV divide, he's still one of the best golfers alive, finishing tied second behind Rai.

And the LIV situation remains the giant elephant sitting next to professional golf.

For another entire season, golf's biggest stars remained split between different tours. Bryson DeChambeau, Rahm, Cameron Smith and others could still appear in majors but weren't part of the PGA Tour's week-to-week ecosystem or FedExCup race. PGA Tour commissioner Brian Rolapp said during Tour Championship week that there is currently no plan to reopen a formal pathway for LIV players such as DeChambeau, Rahm and Smith to return.

That matters even more because LIV's future remains uncertain and professional golf is already changing again.

The PGA Tour announced that beginning in 2028 it will completely overhaul its postseason.

The future format will include a 72-hole Championship Series finale followed by a match-play Tour Championship conducted over two weeks. Thirty-two players will move into a group stage before a 16-player single-elimination bracket determines the champion. Tiger Woods helped lead the committee designing the format.

Personally, I'm intrigued. Match play is criminally underused in professional golf. It creates actual head-to-head drama instead of forcing us to keep track of six leaderboards and projected points while somebody is putting on the 13th green. If they can make the regular season matter while still giving us genuine March Madness-style golf at the end, I'm all for trying something different.

The 2026 season itself was also the 20th edition of the FedExCup, which makes Scheffler's second title feel even more significant. Rory remains the only three-time winner with titles in 2016, 2019 and 2022. Scheffler now joins Tiger as a two-time champion.

And now the official PGA Tour season is essentially finished, but golf isn't disappearing.

The Presidents Cup is still coming September 24-27 at Medinah, where the United States will try to continue its dominance over the International Team. Scheffler, Cameron Young and Collin Morikawa headline the American side, while Ryan Fox, Hideki Matsuyama, Si Woo Kim and Tom Kim give the Internationals some legitimate firepower. The LIV divide once again impacts the event because players such as Bryson DeChambeau and Cameron Smith remain unavailable.

So what do we take away from 2026? Scottie Scheffler is still the guy.

Rory McIlroy is playing with freedom now that the career Grand Slam monkey is finally off his back.

Wyndham Clark is no longer someone you can dismiss as a one-major wonder.

Aaron Rai and Ryan Fox proved major championships can still produce completely unexpected winners.

Viktor Hovland looks dangerous again.

Cameron Young finally started converting all that talent into trophies.

And professional golf itself remains in this strange transitional era where the product on the course is often fantastic while the people running the sport continue trying to figure out what the hell the sport is going to look like three years from now.

But on Sunday at East Lake, none of that mattered.

It came down to Scottie Scheffler needing to chase down one of the best players in the world over 18 holes.

He started three shots behind. He shot 66. He won by three. Another trophy. Another $10 million. Another FedExCup. And another PGA Tour season ends exactly where so many of them have ended over the last five years. With everybody else looking up at Scottie Scheffler.