still recovering from brain surgery<\/a> and at No. 31 with a chance to reach the Tour Championship for the first time in six years. And it is to 46-year-old Adam Scott, the only player in the field who was at Bellerive for the last BMW Championship.<\/p>\nGetting to East Lake all but assures a spot in all four majors. That\u2019s a big perk, along with the chance to win a $10 million payoff.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaking the Tour Championship has always been important,\u201d Scott said. \u201cIt\u2019s always been a marker of your performance throughout the year.\u201d<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a little more at stake for a short list of players \u2014 Scheffler, Fitzpatrick, Young, perhaps even McIlroy. No one has really stood out as PGA Tour player of the year. Scheffler moved to the front with his eight-shot win at the FedEx St. Jude Championship last week. It\u2019s only his second win this year, but it goes along with five runner-up finishes and five other top 4s.<\/p>\n
Scheffler has played so well he already is guaranteed the $23 million bonus for leading the FedEx Cup through the BMW Championship. That doesn\u2019t count toward official earnings.<\/p>\n
That number stands at $119,964,411. Perhaps another testament to changing times is that Woods earned his last official paycheck in the 2024 Masters ($44,000), moving his total to $120,999,166. Scheffler won the Masters that year and moved to No. 12 at $57,658,464.<\/p>\n
So he has made just over $62.3 million in his last 48 tour starts over two years and four months. Great golf. Big money. It was a matter of time.<\/p>\n
And it really doesn\u2019t matter to Scheffler.<\/p>\n
\u201cTiger did a lot for the game of golf and he put us in a position where we\u2019re able to earn some pretty good stuff financially, so that\u2019s something we\u2019re very grateful for,\u201d Scheffler said. \u201cWhen you look at where the purses were at before he came out on tour to where they\u2019re at now is a pretty stark difference. And we\u2019re very thankful for his contributions to the game and hopefully we\u2019ll see him back out here competing again soon.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scheffler\u2019s first PGA Tour check was $25,080 for a tie for 43rd at the 2018 St. Jude Classic. Last place at the BMW Championship this week pays $66,000.<\/p>\n
The testament to Woods is how long he kept his name atop the career money list.<\/p>\n
He took over for Davis Love III \u2014 Love was at the top for all of two weeks \u2014 when Woods tied for second in the Buick Invitational at Torrey Pines (total purse was $3 million) on Feb. 13, 2000. Six players in the BMW Championship field weren\u2019t even born then.<\/p>\n
Talk of money took Scheffler back to his early days of grinding. He had financial freedom with an endorsement deal he signed with Nike, so there was no concern on entry fees in Monday qualifiers or even gas money to get there. But those were fun times to him. <\/p>\n
\u201cJust trying to find my place in the game,\u201d Scheffler said. <\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
See AP\u2019s full golf coverage here<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By DOUG FERGUSON ST. LOUIS (AP) \u2014 Scottie Scheffler is on the cusp of a PGA Tour record…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":53496,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1438,44,56],"class_list":["post-53495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fedex-st-jude-championship","tag-fedex-st-jude-championship","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53495","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=53495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53495\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53496"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=53495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=53495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=53495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}