Viktor Hovland – Winner FedEx Cup 2023
With the 2022-23 Tour Championship having brought the PGA Tour’s lucrative season to a close as Norway’s Viktor Hovland picked up the US$18 million top prize, here are IGW’s reflections on what has been a dramatic year on the field and off the field.
A lucrative but unusual year for Scottie Scheffler
American Scottie Scheffler won two times early in the year – at the WM Phoenix Open and the Players Championship. He amassed 17 top-10 finishes in 23 events and finished outside the top 12
just three times. He took back the World No. 1 rank on May 21 st and has held it ever since. He set a record for prize money in a single season with earnings of a little more than $21 million. Jon Rahm finished roughly $4.5 million behind in second place.
Scottie Scheffler has delivered historic ball-striking numbers this year, proving once again that it’s not what the swing looks like, rather what it delivers. Swing your swing.pic.twitter.com/4WISbFF98Z
— Luke Elvy (@Luke_Elvy) August 20, 2023
Scheffler also led the tour in strokes gained off the tee and approaching the green. In fact, his average of 2.74 strokes gained from tee to green trails only Tiger Woods’ record 2006 season, when Woods averaged 2.98 strokes gained. Scheffler also tied for second in the PGA Championship and finished third in the U.S. Open.
Yet, paradoxically, some might say, it was a disappointing season for Scheffler. He has not won since the Players in March. He held the FedEx Cup lead going into the Tour Championship but lost it after just the first round despite starting at 10-under. The reason: his putting. He finished 150 th out of 181 players in strokes gained putting this season with a rating of -0.301.
Time and again his ball striking got him into contention, but he simply couldn’t overcome his poor putting. That led to one of the more unusual seasons in modern PGA Tour history.
To put it into some of perspective, when Woods led the tour in strokes gained in 2006, he won eight times, including two majors.
Jon Rahm is our choice for player of the year
Jon Rahm won the Masters back in April. He won three other times and was briefly ranked No. 1 in the world. He finished tied for second at the Open Championship and tied for 10th at the U.S. Open. He also had 10 top tens in total for the season.
A lighthearted story and request from the Green Jacket winner. #themasters pic.twitter.com/fqSMUu0nmk
— The Masters (@TheMasters) April 10, 2023
Yes, he finished second to Scheffler on the money list. Yes, his season was more feast and famine. Yes, Scheffler had seven more top-10 finishes but winning matters more, and winning majors matters the most.
Rahm won double the number of tournaments that Scheffler did and won a major. He deserves to be the player of the year.
Another major-less season for Rory McIlroy
242 yards to 4 feet for Rory McIlroy … pic.twitter.com/zjQ4ijHgBa
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 20, 2023
Rory McIlroy won twice this season. He reached World No. 1 again. He had 13 top tens, including a second place at the U.S. Open and ties for seventh and sixth in the PGA Championship and Open Championship respectively.
He’s had a career worth envying by roughly ninety percent of pro golfers who have ever played the game. And yet it’s more than nine years since he won his last major and a Masters title remains as elusive as ever. He missed the cut in 2023 and every year he doesn’t win only increases the pressure for the next year as it becomes a bigger story.
The way things are going, McIlroy is at risk of ending up like Greg Norman – a player with a game seemingly made for Augusta National but someone who could never quite get over the hump.
Viktor Hovland breaks out
Winners find a way.
Viktor Hovland ascended above the world’s best to claim the #FedExCup pic.twitter.com/uIx0VkdNwI
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) August 29, 2023
Viktor Hovland shot a final round 63 to complete a five-shot victory at the Tour Championship and win the FedEx Cup. Hovland earned a staggering $18 million for the win. Golf Digest put the amount in perspective by calculating that it represents 67.4% of his career earnings to this point in his career.
Not bad for a season’s work
The win was Hovland’s second in consecutive weeks and third on the year. It also moved him one spot in the world rankings to fourth. It’s fair to say that Hovland has arrived on the big stage.
Hovland made his pro debut at the 2019 Travelers Championship. He had been low amateur at the Masters and U.S. Open that year was considered part of the next generation of rising stars along side Collin Morikawa, Matthew Wolff and Justin Suh.
Morikawa rose to stardom the quickest while Wolff is languishing on the LIV Tour and Suh has one win on the Korn Ferry Tour. Hovland, now 25, he won three alternate in this first four season, none of them in the United States. His short game wasn’t as sharp as his ball striking and he tended to fade down the stretch as a result. He racked up high finishes but did not win.
This season, though, he seems to have taken the leap after working hard to improve his chipping and putting. He won at Memorial in June, his first win on U.S. soil, and a big one at that. Then put it all together at the BWM Championship with a final round 61, arguably one of the best final rounds of the season, to overtake Scheffler. Winning the Tour championship was the icing on the cake.
Lets see if he can build on this success and win a major in 2024.
The proposed PGA Tour merger with the PIF remains messy and uncertain
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan shocked the golf world when he announced that the tour and the Saudi Public Investment fund had signed an agreement to explore a merger that would create a new for-profit entity. Details of what that arrangement might look like were scarce at the time and remain scarce to this point.
PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan remains confident that the golf merger with LIV Golf will be successful ️ pic.twitter.com/T6aY0wnYy2
— Sky Sports Golf (@SkySportsGolf) August 23, 2023
A number of tour players did not respond well to the news and Monahan had to take time off because of the anxiety and stress caused by the situation. The U.S. government also got involved and is investigating the deal for being potentially anti- competitive. There’s also no guarantee the PGA Tour Policy board would approve the merger if and when one is presented.
Any potential deal also leaves the LIV circuit up in the air as the new entity will decide whether it continues to exist or not.
What happens with this deal will decide the future of the professional game, at least in the short term. That applies whether it comes together or not.
Credits:-
Photo – AP News