{"id":43644,"date":"2026-07-28T21:23:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-28T21:23:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/43644\/"},"modified":"2026-07-28T21:23:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-28T21:23:11","slug":"the-chase-is-on-between-scheffler-mcilroy-to-catch-tiger-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/43644\/","title":{"rendered":"The chase is on between Scheffler, McIlroy to catch Tiger Woods"},"content":{"rendered":"

Tiger Woods<\/a> went to the top of the\u00a0PGA Tour career money list when he was runner-up at Torrey Pines on Feb. 13, 2000, and he has stayed there ever since. His last check for finishing last at the 2024 Masters ($44,400) pushed his career earnings to $120,999,166.<\/p>\n

Being passed is inevitable and now is in clear view. It’s just a matter of who tops him first.<\/p>\n

That leaves both of them just over $4 million away from Woods coming into the lucrative FedEx Cup postseason \u2014 $20 million purses at two playoff events, and the Tour Championship with its $40 million bonus pool that now counts as official money.<\/p>\n

Scheffler’s majors mirror his season:\u00a0Scheffler had the lowest combined score to par in the majors this year, finishing at 21-under par, but without a major trophy for the first time since 2023.<\/p>\n

The world’s No. 1 player was runner-up<\/a> at the Masters, tied for fourth in the U.S. Open<\/a> and British Open<\/a> and tied for 14th in the PGA Championship<\/a>. What does it all mean? That he’s been playing pretty good golf, much like the rest of a 2026 season that features five runner-up finishes but only one win.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the things that I\u2019ve always kind of prided myself on is the consistency. That\u2019s something that shows that I\u2019m playing some pretty good golf,\u201d Scheffler said last week before the 3M Open. “It just hasn\u2019t been quite good enough to win some tournaments. I still feel like my game\u2019s in a good spot and I\u2019ve played some nice golf.<\/p>\n

\u201cI haven\u2019t played any great golf yet, but I\u2019ve played some nice golf over the course of the season.\u201d<\/p>\n

The not-so-magic number: Scott Stevens on the PGA Tour Americas in the opening round and Michael Kim, who plays out of Dallas, on the PGA Tour in the second round of the 3M Open<\/a> are the latest to join the growing list of 59 or lower on golf circuits around the world.<\/p>\n

Most surprising is that it took until July 23 for the first person of 2026 to post a sub-60 round.<\/p>\n

Golf’s \u201cmagic number\u201d has lost a little bit of magic during the inevitable evolution of scoring. Al Geiberger was the original Mr. 59 in the 1977 Memphis Classic. Since then, there have been 69 sub-60s rounds on 21 recognized tours around the world.<\/p>\n

There were eight sub-60 rounds in 2025, and nine sub-60 rounds in 2024.<\/p>\n

Stat of the week: The last six players to shoot 59 on the PGA Tour did not win the tournament.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tiger Woods went to the top of the\u00a0PGA Tour career money list when he was runner-up at Torrey…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":43645,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[459,399,1059,17186],"class_list":["post-43644","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rory-mcilroy","tag-article","tag-rory-mcilroy","tag-tp-scottie-scheffler","tag-tp-pga-frisco"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43644","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=43644"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43644\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/43645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=43644"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=43644"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=43644"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}