DALLAS — Ultimately the 2022 golf season will be remembered for chaos, confusion, the exit of top players and important personalities to LIV Golf and the PGA Tour’s response — made emphatically by Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan Wednesday — to a changing landscape.
Along with that, it can still be Scottie Scheffler’s year, too. The Highland Park and University of Texas product won’t get to battle his former Dallas junior golf rival because Will Zalatoris, ranked third in the Fed Ex points, has withdrawn from the Tour Championship due to two herniated discs in his back. But Scheffler will have ample competition starting Thursday at the familiar East Lake course in Atlanta in what is now a 29-man chase for the title.
If the entire golf season was weighted more evenly, the championship would already be Scheffler’s. He is the only four-time winner, having captured the Waste Management Phoenix Open, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Dell Match Play tournament in Austin and the Masters in a two-month span from February through April. There are three three-time winners, but the steadiness of Scheffler’s overall play (he was second at Colonial, second at the U.S. Open and third at last week’s BMW Championship) has him nearly $4 million ahead of Cameron Smith and close to $7 million ahead of Xander Schauffele and Sam Burns.
