The 18 craziest facts from the 2024 FedEx Cup season on the PGA Tour
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You won’t believe how much Scottie’s Scheffler’s caddie has earned across 19 tournaments on the PGA Tour in 2024
The FedEx Cup playoffs are over, Scottie Scheffler is the new 25 million dollar man, and soon our attention will turn to the Presidents Cup and then the new TGL league. But before all that, we wanted to recap some of the PGA Tour’s craziest scores, numbers, and records from the 2024 FedEx Cup season.
We trawled through every stat category on the PGA Tour website – all 458 of them – and pulled out 18 facts and figures that deserve more than a passing mention. And yes, Scottie features in a few of them…
Scottie Scheffler is the undisputed No.1 in golf
Whatever you think about the World rankings, you can’t dispute these numbers which place Scottie in a league of his own this season. He went 42 consecutive rounds without a round over par to start the 2024 FedEx Cup season and ended it top of 73 different statistical metrics, including:
Wins – 7
Top 10s – 16
Scoring average (adjusted) – 68.645
Strokes gained: Total – 2.496
Strokes gained: Tee to green – 2.401
Birdie average – 4.88 per round
Strokes gained: Approach the green – 1.269
Greens in regulation – 73.16%
Approaches from 100-125 yards – 14ft 9in
Approaches from 150-175 yards – 23ft
Putting average – 1.680
Putts made over 10ft per event – 7.7
Par 4 scoring average – 3.88
Par 5 scoring average – 4.42
Front nine scoring average – 34.09
Back nine scoring average – 33.92
… And Scheffler’s caddie is a very rich man
If his ball-striking doesn’t make you envious, Scheffler’s bank balance almost certainly will. The World No.1 pocketed a record $29,228,357 in on-course earnings, plus a $25 million FedEx bonus AND an $8 million Comcast Business Top 10 bonus. If he pays his caddie the standard 10% of everything he won, that means Ted Scott has taken home $6.2 million, plus change, for the same period. Not bad for 19 weeks of work!
Rory has some catching up to do
We make no apologies for giving you another Scheffler stat. And this one underlines his dominance. The average points gap between the World No.1 and World No.3 Rory McIlroy is currently larger than the chasm separating Rory and the last of the 4,609 players in the Official World Golf Rankings.
Xander Schauffele is the short-game king
Winning two majors and posting 15 top 10s from 21 events means you’re doing a lot of things right. Dig into the stats a little deeper, though, and you’ll see Schauffele is the only player to rank inside the top 25 in all strokes gained categories. He’s also got up and down 70.49% of the time, which places him second on the PGA Tour’s all-time list of top scramblers. Number one, in case you were wondering, is Greg Norman which… is a little awkward. Let’s move on.
Hovland’s Achilles heel has returned
A lot has been made about Viktor Hovland’s FedEx Cup defense this season. The swing changes were ultimately ill-advised and meant the first four months of the year were pretty much a write-off. With his focus elsewhere, his short game has regressed back to the level which gave us his most memorable quote: “I just suck at chipping”.
This year he ranks in the bottom 10% for strokes gained: around the green, scrambling, and proximity to the hole from the sand. It’s testament to the other parts of his game that he still made the Tour Championship, but based on his actual scoring average he wasn’t even a top-70 player this season.
Billy Horschel loves a bucket and spade
Horschel also loves West Ham and Wentworth, but we digress. The 37-year-old had the Midas touch in the bunkers earlier this year and got up and down 19 times in a row. Sadly, his record wasn’t quite as good at The Open, otherwise he probably would have won it.
Xander Schauffele doesn’t do three putts
We’ve already given you one reason why Schauffele hasn’t missed a cut since the 2022 Masters. This is another – and it’s got us thinking that we should switch to putting cross-handed as well. Of the 1,350 holes he has played this year, the World No.2 has three-putted just 13 times. A special mention should also go to Shane Lowry, who’s currently on a run of 359 holes without a three-putt.
Cameron Champ has ‘game’ off the tee
Rory McIlroy’s got nothing on the man with one of the coolest names in golf. This is the sixth season in a row Cameron Champ has been generating the fastest average ball speed with a driver in hand (190.41mph). He also ranks first for strokes gained: off the tee (0.877) and total distance (320.7 yards). The net result? Zero top 10s and 13 missed cuts since January. Maybe you do drive for show…
Max Homa is the new Bryson
A long driving contest on Bryson’s YouTube channel would probably prove otherwise, but Homa can at least claim to have hit the longest drive in PGA Tour history. His effort of 478 yards at the Tournament of Champions was altitude-assisted (obviously) but why let that get in the way of a good story? We hope to see the record mentioned on his Twitter bio before long!
Jhonattan Vegas has a game for the range
One of the things we love about the PGA Tour is that they have a stat for everything, including something called total driving. It measures a player’s rank for both driving distance and accuracy, hence it’s usually used as an indicator for the best drivers on tour. This year’s ranking includes all your usual suspects except for Jhonattan Vegas, who sits just behind Scheffler and Ludvig Aberg at the top of the list. Unfortunately, a poor short game continues to undo a lot of great work tee to green, otherwise we’d probably be talking about a top-10 player.
Finding fairways is overrated
We’re happy to die on this hill since hitting driver is far more fun than playing for position. Rookie Chris Gotterup has a similar way of thinking and is the only player to hit fewer than 50% of fairways off the tee so far this year. The fact he won for the first time at the Myrtle Beach Classic in May has convinced us that we’re only a bad drive away from a big payday!
Tommy Fleetwood has made $25 million without winning a tournament
Yes, we know this is not strictly true because he has won seven times on the DP World Tour. But that form has yet to fully translate to America, where he’s now winless in 145 starts dating back to 2018. In that time he’s amassed a 25% hit rate of top 10s and become the all-time official money leader without a PGA Tour title. He’s also an Olympic silver medallist now which seems rather fitting too.
Schauffele is the man for the big occasion
Sorry Brooks Koepka, but Schauffele’s record in the big four is on a different level – and it has been for quite some time. Since 2019, he is 70 under par in Major Championships and has 19 top-18 finishes in just 23 starts. What’s more, he’s just wrapped up the best Major season we’ve seen since Jordan Spieth in 2015. He had the best aggregate score (-32) of any player with two wins and two other top-eight finishes. The guy is a machine.
Nick Dunlap is the next big thing
This time last year Dunlap was about to begin his sophomore year at the University of Alabama. Now he can claim to be the only player in Tour history to win as both an amateur and a pro in a single season. He gets our vote for breakout star of the year (Bob MacIntyre is a close second).
Mackenzie Hughes is the sharpest of shooters
If there was an award for the most impressive stat that doesn’t feature Scheffler or Schauffele, this would probably be it. Hughes has had 30 hole-outs from off the green, which equates to one every 47 holes give or take. Someone get Viktor Hovland his number.
Jordan Spieth had a season to forget
Ah, the curious case of Mr Spieth. The 31-year-old has finally gone under the knife to fix a long-standing wrist problem, which goes some way to explaining his rotten run of form. He’s only managed one top 10s since early February and had already played his way out of Presidents Cup contention by missing as many cuts as he’s made (seven) in 2024. A rest and reset is needed.
Aaron Baddeley has still got it
Forget what you’ve heard about Cameron Smith being the best putter on planet golf*. We’d argue that he’s not even the best putter from Australia. That title belongs to Aaron Baddeley, who’s featured in the top 10 for strokes gained: putting 11 times since 2004. His form with the flatstick had been tailing off until this year, which has coincided with him topping the charts for one putt percentage and putts made from inside 10ft putts. He also ranks second for putting average, putts per round, and strokes gained behind Justin Suh. We fancy him to change that before the year is out.
*The best male putter on Tour is actually Denny McCarthy, who’s ranked in the top three for strokes gained in four of the last six seasons. Let that be the end of the debate!
It pays to play on the PGA Tour
There’s a reason why few players are complaining about the DP World Tour giving away 10 PGA Tour card to their best performers each season. Matthieu Pavon has made $5.2 million in official prize money during his rookie year in America, which is more than four times the amount he earned on the DP World Tour last season. The average player has already pocketed $1.924 million and there’s still the fall season to come.
About the author
Michael Catling – Features Editor
Michael Catling is an award-winning journalist who specializes in golf’s Majors and Tours, including DP World, PGA, LPGA, and LIV.
Michael joined Today’s Golfer in 2016 and has traveled the world to attend the game’s biggest events and secure exclusive interviews with the game’s biggest names, including Jack Nicklaus, Jordan Spieth, Tom Watson, Greg Norman, Gary Player, Martin Slumbers, and Justin Thomas.
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The 18 craziest PGA Tour stats from the 2024 FedEx Cup season
