The 2024 Pro Golf Year-in-Review

First and foremost: Hi, welcome to my new home at Skratch, and thank you for being here. I’m genuinely amped about what we're building—both at the brand level and with all the new content offerings I'll launch in 2025.

We have, however, decided to launch a golf website just before actual cooking season for pro golf action. It’s a perfect time to empty the notebook and wrap up the men's pro game in 2024 with some year-end awards (and cross our fingers that nothing crazy happens between now and December 31).

We should be fine. It’s not like there’s a massive deal or anything, potentially involving a sovereign wealth fund, that could be finalized soon.

There is much to discuss, and you have plenty of reading to do, so let’s dive right in. There’s a ton of Scottie in here, a lot of Xander too (but not as much as Scottie!), and a depressingly low dose of Tiger Woods. Such are the times in golf.

Onto our first award…

PLAYER OF THE YEAR: Scottie Scheffler

Runner-Up:

Xander Schauffele

I’m going to keep saying this: It remains truly remarkable that the respective last names of the two best golfers in the world are Scheffler and Schauffele. They’re just breathtakingly similar last names, situation. You don’t come across a S-c-h, double-f combo that often. And yet the pinnacle of the men’s game has two!

So much has been written and discussed about Scheffler vs. Schauffele this year. Let’s do it one more time. Scottie was, by every available metric, the better player throughout the entire year. It’s not even really that close. He won seven total 72-hole golf tournaments—in this space we do not acknowledge his “win” at the Tour Championship, a net tournament in which he did not shoot the lowest score, but that would’ve made it eight—and none of those seven actual wins came against weak fields. In chronological order: the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the Players Championship, the Masters, the RBC Heritage, the Memorial Tournament, the Travelers Championship and the Olympic Games. He posted 16 top-10 finishes in 19 starts. The advanced stats are clear: it’s the best run of form we’ve seen since prime, mid-2000s Tiger Woods.

And yet some of his peers might rather have Xander’s year. What percent of guys would? Not sure. Somewhere between 10 and 20? This is when I wish someone still did the anonymous tour pro polls that S.I. Golf used to. (Now there’s an an idea….)

Whether you’d take Scottie’s or Xander’s year is essentially a question of how much more the majors matter to you than every other tournament—your answer to that question likely depends on where you are in your career. On one end of that spectrum: a PGA Tour rookie who looks at seven wins, all those top 10s, $50+ Million in on-course earnings and marvels at the excellence. At the other end there’s Rory McIlroy, who’d probably give up 15 more PGA Tour wins for one more major. The All-Time Greats are measured in majors, and a sense of urgency develops once you’re in that 35-ish age range. But neither Scottie nor Xander need majors at this stage of their careers.

And yet it remains inarguable that 2 majors is more than 1, and Xander’s commanding performance at Royal Troon turned a Player of the Year question into a legitimate conversation. It wasn’t just that he won two—it’s how: he birdied the 72nd hole to win his first major by a shot then shot 69-65 in let’s-not-even-try conditions to run away with the Open Championship. Xander Schauffele arrived this year, full stop.

I’m still going Scottie. It’d be a different call if Scheffler didn’t get at least one major this year. But he did, of course, win the biggest golf tournament on the planet, the fifth biggest tournament, and a Gold Medal. (I’m a firm believer that the Olympic games will continue to grow in stature within the sport.) Ultimately, Scottie gets the edge in a contest that was a total no-brainer until that damp weekend in Scotland.

PLAYER OF THE YEAR (THIRD PLACE): Bryson DeChambeau

Runners Up:

Rory McIlroy

Collin Morikawa

The real intrigue in the 2024 POTY race is who finishes third, and there’s a clear winner of our bronze medal. Bryson DeChambeau’s PR turnaround should be studied in marketing and communication classes across the world. There’s not been a single person who benefitted from a move to LIV Golf like Bryson did. He took $100+ Million from the Saudis and got way, way more popular. That is not easy to do.

Zooming back, let’s not forget just how chaotic a presence he was on the PGA Tour, even beyond 2019’s infamous bulk-up. An incomplete list: the funny hat, the slow play, the single-length irons, the weird run-ins with cameramen, the never-ending beef with Brooks Koepka. He was a tragic figure of sorts—the butt of jokes, a microphone constantly in his face, at the very center of attention whether he liked it or not.

It’s impossible to pinpoint just one factor that has led to the Bryson resurgence. But it has been extremely real, and right now he is the most popular golfer in the world this side of Tiger Woods. That became clear during his run at the PGA Championship in Kentucky, where he was undoubtedly the crowd favorite over Schauffele and Viktor Hovland. With the young kids, it wasn’t close. Then, it hit you like a smack in the face at Pinehurst: This guy’s playing against Rory McIlroy, who is trying to win his first major in a decade…I’m pretty sure more of the crowd wants Bryson?

After the win he stayed deep into the summer night to interact with anyone and everyone. So how did he morph from that adrenaline-overloaded 20-something to arguably the face of the sport? The maturity that comes with age (he’s now 31); the passing of his father, which he said gave him greater perspective on life; a better diet that no longer includes a half-dozen protein shakes a day; the blossoming of his YouTube Channel, which allows him to show off his personality on his terms; and yes, his move to LIV Golf, where he feels valued and personally invested in its success.

It’s been a winning formula for Bryson the Human. It certainly hasn’t hurt that Bryson the Golfer’s playing some terrific ball. Sometimes lost in all the Bryson discourse is just how good he’s been at every level—and before all the headlines at that. He was a historically good amateur a top-10 player in the world before he put on 30 pounds and 20 mph of ball speed in three months. And he’s somehow managed to keep all that speed even after he’s slimmed down again.

One personal gripe: his first U.S. Open was a little one-dimensional for me. It just was.

That’s not a knock; that’s what Winged Foot called for. The fairways were so narrow and the rough so long that it became a proper Bomb n’ Gouge™️ fest. Knock it down there as far as possible, and if it’s in the rough, use all that strength to muscle it out and run it up the front of the greens. He chipped and putted great that week, and he drove it pretty straight, too. My beef is not with Bryson, I just really didn’t like the setup at Winged Foot in 2020. Pinehurst was a far more exacting test and he played beautifully tee-to-green. A comprehensive victory for a man who is quite clearly enjoying his lot in life.

ROUND OF THE YEAR: Scottie Scheffler’s Sunday 62 at the Olympics

Runners-Up:

Scottie Scheffler’s Sunday 64 at TPC Sawgrass

Xander Schauffele’s Sunday 65 at Royal Troon

Hideki Matsuayama’s Sunday 62 at Genesis

Cristobal del Solar’s 57 on the Korn Ferry Tour

Hideki Matsuayama & Sungjae Im in Friday Foursomes at Presidents Cup

Quite a few worthy candidates here, so let’s hand out some flowers before we hand out a bouquet to the winner. Scheffler’s 64 at TPC Sawgrass came just a week after he shot a bogey-free 66 to close out the Arnold Palmer Invitational—by five. He was paired with Shane Lowry that day and Shane was borderline speechless after watching it. That’s how good Scheffler was, and it sent an ominous message.

Prior to that round, watching Scheffler in 2024 was groundhog day, a total continuation of the back half of 2023. Same shit every week: he’d hit it great, finish near the bottom in putting stats and lose by a couple. The work with Phil Kenyon wasn't paying off yet, at least not visibly. Then came Bay Hill, and Scottie’s putter was money that week—it was a true “oh shit” moment. . If he’s gonna continue hitting it that well—and now he can putt—everyone else might be in serious trouble…

He then drove across the state of Florida and put himself in a decent, albeit not fantastic, position heading into the final round of the Players: four shots back of the lead, needing a super-low one to have a chance to win the biggest prize of the year thus far. The round began with six pars but kicked into gear with a hole-out eagle on the par-4 4th. He then made three more birdies before the turn. Five-under 31. Wyndham Clark and Xander Schauffele, back in the final group were playing extremely meh (remember back then we all still didn’t know if Xander could close)and Scottie birdied 11 and 12 to draw even, before one final birdie at the par-5 16 for an eight-under 64. Brian Harman failed to birdie the 18th and a power-lipout from Clark sealed it. The Year of Scottie had truly begun.

The weekend at the 2024 Open Championship at Royal Troon holds special significance in my heart. It was the first major championship where I got to call live golf (for the BBC), and I’ll never forget just how miserable that Saturday was weather-wise. Cold, rainy and windy for five straight hours. You’d expect someone who travels as much as I do to be a decent packer of clothes, but it’s actually the opposite. I didn’t bring anything near warm enough, and I had to stop at some department store in Ayrshire to get a raincoat. Apparently I should’ve sprung for the more expensive one because water seeped into my sweater and my phone broke from the water damage that afternoon. There was a point near the 11th green (about as far from the clubhouse as possible) where I genuinely considered radio’ing up the producers, telling them they didn’t have to pay me for the day, turning around and sprinting into the clubhouse.

Nevertheless, he persevered. I followed Schauffele that entire day and was in awe—not just by his two-under 69, but the total stoicism with which he carried himself. He’s not a fan of rain gear, so he wore just a cashmere gray sweater that slowly got darker and heavier throughout the day as it took on water. I was shivering, my teeth chattering, while he just kept putting one foot in front of the other and flushing golf shots. It’s not often I find myself truly amazed on the golf course anymore, but I was that day. I said on air early that Saturday that he’d win the Open.

He did, and Sunday’s round was even better. Thriston Lawrence gave a proper bid to pull a Todd Hamilton or Ben Curtis and capture the claret jug out of nowhere. Justin Rose, BIlly Horschel and Shane Lowry all wore their hearts on their sleeves and tried to will themselves to victory. They were fist-pumping, interacting with the crowd—total opposite approaches to Schauffele’s. But it was Xander who played the best golf by some distance. His Sunday 65 was the best round of the day by two, a virtuoso performance fitting of a game good enough to win two majors in one year.

Hideki’s 62 at Riviera tied the course record and came in distinctly Hideki fashion—on the difficult par-4 15th hole, with the tournament still up for grabs (Will Zalatoris, Luke List, Patrick Cantlay and Schauffele were all in the mix), he hit an approach that he immediately hated. One-hand finish. Recoil in disgust. The whole deal. And, as so often happens with him, the shot finished eight inches from the hole. He then stepped to the par-3 16th and hit one to six inches. Two more perfect swings on the par-5 17th set up one final birdie, and a no-nonsense par at 18 clinched a three-shot victory. The round also gifted us one of the better images of the year: his caddie, Shota Hayafuji, who has a knack for going viral, hitting his nicotine vape after that famous walk from the 18th green up to the clubhouse. A job done, and a job done very well.

The other two nominees are on this list not because I remember the details of the rounds; they’re just that good on paper. You can’t not address them. Cristobal del Solar became the first player in a PGA Tour-sanctioned event (the Astara Golf Championship on the Korn Ferry Tour) to shoot 57. There was another sub-60 round that week, and the course was at significant elevation, and it was the sixth sub-60 round on the Korn Ferry Tour in the last 12 months at that point. If you didn’t shoot 59 on the Korn Ferry Tour in 2024, you might be a loser. All that said…the man still shot 57 in a PGA Tour-sanctioned event, something no one else has managed to do. Then there’s Sungjae Im and Hideki Matsuyama, who slammed the door on Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay in the Presidents Cup by finishing with seven consecutive birdies in alternate shot. That is just an obscene standard of play in the most awkward format.

But the winner once again is Scheffler, and this is, in part, an acknowledgement of just how great the Olympic golf tournament was this year. Golf returned to the Olympics in 2016 after a 112-year absence yet the vast majority of players skipped Rio. Most used the Zika virus as an excuse—it was lame then and it’s lame now—but the real reason guys didn’t play is the tournament came right in the thick of major season and no one really knew what winning an Olympic gold meant in golf. Four years later became five years later thanks to that pesky virus, and in 2021 another group of top players opted to skip a watered-down Olympic experience with no village and no fans.

That wasn’t the case this year. Every single player who qualified for the Olympics made the trip over to Paris and teed it up at Le Golf National. An epic field, a worthy venue and a world-famous host city produced a highly compelling tournament that, fittingly, finished with Scheffler leapfrogging a star-studded leaderboard for the win that included Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Hideki Mastuyama. Scheffler broke down in tears at the medal ceremony, and in one afternoon the Olympics evolved from being an unknown quantity in our sport to becoming the fifth most important event every four years. There was a clear theme from players that week: there’s just nothing like wearing your country’s colors.

SHOT OF THE YEAR: Bryson's bunker shot on 18 in the final round of the U.S. Open

Runners-Up:

Scottie Scheffler’s hole-out on No. 4 in the final round of the Players Championship

Chris Kirk’s 5-iron to win the Sentry Tournament of Champions

Sahith Theegala’s chip-in on No. 15 on Friday of the U.S. Open

Ludvig Aberg’s fairway-wood approach on No. 11, Saturday at U.S. Open

It’s not often a shot is so great that weekend golfers all over the world start emulating it. That’s how good—and how important—Bryson’s third shot was on the 18th hole at Pinehurst No. 2.

First, how we got there: Rory misses one breathtakingly short and easy putt and one slightly longer, much harder one (more on that in a second); Bryson steps to 18 with a one-shot lead, needing a par to win his second United States Open; he pulls his tee shot into the left shit on 18; he punches his second into the very front of the bunker guarding the front of green, leaving a nightmarish up-and-down if he’s to win it in regulation. It is truly the amateur golfer’s worst nightmare: a 55-yard bunker shot to a domed green bouncing like concrete and running like a hardwood floor.

He pulled off what is, without question, one of the best short-game shots in major championship history, blasting his 58-degree wedge out to 3 feet, 11 inches.

“One of the worst places I could have been,” DeChambeau said after the round, before giving some love to his caddie Greg Bodine. “G-Bo just said, ‘Bryson, just get it up-and-down. That’s all you’ve got to do. You’ve done this plenty of times before. I’ve seen some crazy shots from you from 50 yards out of a bunker.’”

This, surely, was the craziest of them all. And from that day forward, any ball coming to rest in a bunker 50-odd yards from the hole has been met with: “Let’s see your Bryson.” There is no greater compliment.

As for the others: we already touched on Scottie’s hoop at Sawgrass. Chris Kirk’s 5-iron at Kapalua essentially walked off the first signature event of the season. Pinehurst’s wispy rough and turtleback green surrounds brought out the artistry in players and produced the highest shot values of the year. It was a welcome change of pace for the U.S. Open, which frequents brutes. My two favorites were this filthy, filthy chip from Sahith Theegala and this 294-yard 7-wood from Ludvig Aberg, which I was lucky enough to see live.

I think he was aiming a good 15 yards right of the target, but what resulted was one of the highest launched 7-woods I’d ever seen, and holding the green on that line to that pin seemed impossible.

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR: Nick Dunlap

Runners-Up:

Mathieu Pavon

Jake Knapp

Fair to say Nick Dunlap’s achievement has flown under the radar a little bit? The Alabama sophomore became the first amateur to win on the PGA Tour since Phil Mickelson in 1993 and did so by out-macho’ing Sam Burns down the stretch at the American Express. He then faced a kinda-but-not-really difficult choice: return to Alabama or immediately accept membership on the PGA Tour, already be in the winner’s category and get into a bunch of guaranteed money events. Again, not that tough.

Understandably so, his game dipped a bit in the immediate aftermath of that victory. His life flipped in an instant, and he had to learn how to be a full-time touring pro way before he ever expected to. But he added a second tour victory, winning the opposite-field Barracuda Championship as most of the golf world enjoyed that beautiful post-Open Championship snooze. He made history, and there’s only one person in the world who has two PGA Tour victories but isn’t old enough to buy beer.

Mathieu Pavon had an excellent, excellent rookie season that few saw coming. The 31-year-old Frenchman was enjoying a solid if unspectacular career in Europe before getting hot late last summer and nabbing his PGA Tour card. He then won at Torrey Pines in January, followed it up with a T3 at Pebble Beach and was off and running. Pavon made it to the Tour Championship, earned $5.25 Million for the year and has a legitimate chance to make next year’s Ryder Cup team. His great play, along with that of Robert MacIntyre, went a long way toward proving the DP World Tour graduates could hang immediately on the PGA Tour. It's part of the reason the DP World Tour will still offer 10 PGA Tour cards beginning in 2026, when the Korn Ferry Tour’s allotment is likely dropping from 30 to 20.

Jake Knapp is a big-time vibes guy, and he burst onto the scene with those blonde locks and that John-Daly-Meets-Freddie-Couples swing. He didn’t have the consistency of the other two and, despite his win in Mexico, failed to finish in the top 50 of the FedEx Cup and lock in signature events for the next year. Still room to grow, but an awesome rookie year, and the game is better for having his personality now in it.

BEST WATCH OF THE YEAR: Bryson d. Rory at Pinehurst

Runners Up:

Scottie emerges from loaded leaderboard to win Gold

Scottie holds off little brother Tom Kim at Travelers

Bob MacIntyre wins for all of Scotland

Niemann vs. Sergio under the lights in Mexico

Scottie vs. Tom Kim gets a little testy at the Presidents Cup

No surprise here. It’s now been five months since, which is ample time to let that Sunday marinate. Far too often we let the immediate afterglow of an epic sporting event cloud our judgment. We deem something the greatest game in 20 years when we don’t really know if it is. When I was looking back and researching for this piece, I came across a tweet I sent that afternoon: “Best major since the 2019 Masters?”

I often cringe at old tweets. Not this one. I think it holds up. There was so much on the line that day. Rory McIlroy had his best chance yet to end his most curious drought, a decade-long barren stretch in the majors after racking up four by age 25. Bryson, after a near-miss at Valhalla, was vying to cement himself as the face of golf’s next wave, the perfect figure to bridge the professional game and the online/cultural space that has breathed new life into our sport. And it was all happening at Pinehurst No. 2, perhaps the cathedral of American golf, playing exactly like a U.S. Open course should. A proper battle of titans that ended in tragedy. At least for Rory fans.

It was a reminder, after two years of bickering and negotiating and more bickering and even more negotiating, of when our sport is at its best. Bryson was ecstatic after the win. Rory was crestfallen. Bryson hung around deep into the night, talking to anyone and everyone, soaking in every second. Rory sped off without speaking to a single person. That is sport at its peak

QUOTE OF THE YEAR:

"If Rory McIlroy goes and completes his grand slam without some of the best players in the world, there’s just going to be an asterisk.” —Talor Gooch

Runners Up:

”I think it’s silly.” —Scottie Scheffler on Tour Championship format

”If I catch myself thinking about what could go wrong, I let myself dream about what could go right.” —Max Homa

"It may or may not be (my last U.S. Open)” —Tiger Woods

"Just because (Harry Diamond’s) not standing in the middle of the tee box like other caddies who want to be seen and heard doesn’t mean that his voice isn’t heard by Rory.”

Scottie Scheffler said the quiet part out loud: the FedEx Cup playoffs are a bit of a dud at the end of a season and don’t really serve either of their intended purposes; It’s not an entertaining product on its own, and it’s not the best way to identify a season-long champion. Max Homa, as he often does these days, casually dropped a nugget of wisdom that reverberates far beyond golf. Tiger bluntly stated the obvious: that his comeback from that catastrophic car accident has proven his most difficult mountain to climb. Shane Lowry rushed to the defense of his pal Harry Diamond, who took unwarranted heat for Rory’s shortcomings at Pinehurst.

But the clear winner here is Talor Gooch and The Great Asterisk of 2024. On its face, it wasn't a completely ridiculous statement— the emergence of LIV Golf has indeed fractured the professional game, and you could argue a few guys good enough to play in majors aren’t getting in them because of where they play. But that assertion coming from Gooch, who didn’t have a Hall of Fame career before he made the move to LIV, rang more comedic than anything else. Gooch also didn’t even try to qualify for the U.S. Open this year, essentially taking his ball and going home because he didn’t like the rules. Contrast that with a guy like Joaquin Niemann, who also didn’t like the rules, but decided to actually do something about it. Niemann traveled all around the world during LIV’s offseason, played really well in events on other tours, showed the powers that be that he wanted badly to get into the majors, and he got his special invite into the Masters and PGA Championship.

A Masters victory without, say, Brooks Koepka or Jon Rahm or Bryson DeChambeau in the field, maybe that’s asterisk-material. But the Masters (and the other majors) retain the power to invite whomever they please, and it’s in their best interest to stand above the fray of the Battle of the Tours, and that’s what they’ve decided to do. The majors remain asterisk-free.

RULES DISPUTE OF THE YEAR:

Sahith Theegala calls a penalty on himself at the Tour Championship, costing himself millions.

Runners Up:

Jordan Spieth DQ’d for signing a wrong scorecard at Riviera

Peter Malnati’s good fortune leads to fortuitous drop, victory in Tampa

A fan finds Shane Lowry’s ball at the Open, much to Shane Lowry’s disappointment

Matt Kuchar forces tournament volunteers to return Monday morning for one player

Joel Dahmen penalized 4 shots for having an extra 4-iron

There’s never a dearth of worthy candidates in this category but this year gave us a particularly strong offering. Jordan Spieth’s DQ from the Genesis led to an interesting conversation about the utility in having players keep their own scores in the year 2024, when every shot is captured by radar technology and analyzed by algorithms in milliseconds to provide live odds for bettors the world over. (I also have a half-baked theory that Tour players’ digestive systems were simply not ready for In N’ Out—let’s not forget Tiger’s withdrawal for “flu” symptoms and Tom Kim very publicly sprinting to the toilet—but that’s a conversation for another time). Peter Malnati’s good fortune was the rules imbroglio that likely had the biggest impact on the actual result of a tournament. Back in March, on the 16th hole on Sunday of the Valspar Championship while tied for the lead, Malnati’s approach raced through the green and nestled in some gnarly rough just past the putting surface. But he found a pot o’ gold in the form of a sprinkler head next to his ball, and the rules permitted him to drop the ball on the fringe as it was not closer to the hole. From there, a routine two-putt. He’d go on to win the tournament. Not his fault, obviously, for using the rules to his advantage. But surely there should be a rule that a free drop shouldn’t materially improve playing conditions?

Shane Lowry’s adventure at Royal Troon was noteworthy because it’s usually a good thing when someone finds an errant golf ball. Not this time—the rough was so thick that Lowry would’ve much preferred simply dropping one in the fairway and taking the necessary penalty. But when the ball is found, even when it’s by a fan and the player wasn’t trying to find it, the ball must be played. Joel Dahmen’s submission came late in the year The culprit: an extra 4-iron he’d been hitting on the range casually that somehow made it into the bag. Asked after the round how that possibly happened, he was brief: “Great question.”

The Kuchar situation requires a bit more unpacking. Back at the Wyndham Championship in August, Kuchar was playing in the final group on Sunday alongside Max Greyserman. It was a marathon 36-hole day after torrential rain had the event playing catch up all week, and the grounds crew did an unreal job getting the course playable. It seemed that, against all odds, they’d be able to finish everything by Sunday evening. When Kuchar and Greyserman stepped to the 18th tee with the light quickly fading, Greyserman still had a chance to win the tournament but Kuchar did not. Kuchar raced from 17 to 18, stuck his tee in the ground, played way too fast—while Aaron Rai, the eventual winner, was still in the 18th fairway—and pulled his tee shot well left. In that moment you figured he just wanted to start the hole and thus, by rule, have the option of finishing it. That’s when things got weird. After Greyserman hit his ball down the fairway, Kuchar decided he’d mark his ball in the left rough and come back to finish half a hole in the morning. Instead of just powering through the finish line, that decision made a bunch of people come back Monday after an already grueling week. Kuchar made par and tied for 12th.

What made the whole ordeal even weirder was Kuchar’s justification for his move; he suggested he was sending some sort of message to Greyserman, a rookie on Tour.

“I was trying to set an example for Max,” Kuchar was quoted as saying. “We were so far past when we should’ve stopped playing [given the light]. We saw what Max did on hole 16; they should’ve blown the horn there. I feel bad, the poor kid should’ve won this tournament. By me not playing, it may show Max he has an important shot to hit.”

The next morning, after making his par, Kuchar seemed to apologize and understood why the move rubbed so many the wrong way—but he also didn’t really explain why he did it? Like, if you get it, then why do it?

"Listen, nobody wants to be that guy, which I feel I turned into, the one guy that didn't finish," he said, striking a conciliatory tone. "I can't tell you how many times I have been finished with a round thinking, bummed out that somebody didn't finish, that we didn't get to make the cut because somebody didn't finish. Here it's me now as the guy that didn't get to finish the tournament."

I spoke with Greyserman shortly thereafter and he had no clue what Kuchar was talking about.

“I don’t really know why, again, he never said anything to me,” Greyserman said. “Not sure why he said that in the media. I’m going to give him the benefit of the doubt, but I think he needed (temporary immovable obstruction) relief. Maybe that was going to take a lot of time, which is fine. For him to come out and say that he was trying to do something in service to me, I thought that was pretty strange.”

Pretty strange indeed.

And yet our winner is Sahith Theegala, who managed to turn this into a sportsmanship award. There are many aspects of golf that make it unique. Some are great and some not so much. One of the great ones is the expectation of honesty. There’s no room for deceit in golf etiquette. In basketball, players flop to try to get a foul call. Soccer might be the worst of all. In golf? A guy calls a penalty on himself for moving a piece of sand, even when no other person saw the sand move, the 4K camera zoomed in didn’t see the sand move, and the player himself isn’t even 100 percent sure the sand moved. There is no price tag on a clean golfing conscience, and that’s why Theegala opted to call a two-shot penalty on himself after kinda-sorta moving sand during his backswing from a bunker. It happened on the 3rd hole at East Lake during the third round of the Tour Championship. Theegala was playing great but pushed his drive into a fairway bunker.

“It was an unusual lie,” Theegala said after the round, “and I usually pick up the club and take it back, but because of the lie, right on my backswing, I felt like I moved a few grains of sand for sure.

His conscience clear, Theegala still managed to shoot 66 that day and finished third in the Tour Championship, winning himself $7.5 Million. But had he not called the penalty on himself, he would’ve finished tied for second with Collin Morikawa and won $10 Million. The penalty cost him $2.5 Million.

Perhaps it’s an indictment of modern society that I find Theegala’s decision so admirable. Always extremely humble, he was pretty nonchalant about the whole thing afterward. In so many words: I’m pretty sure I broke the rules, and in this game, if you’re pretty sure you broke the rules, you take the penalty. That aw-shucks mentality has deep roots in our game. As Bobby Jones famously said: “You might as well praise a man for not robbing a bank." If only everyone saw the world as clearly as golfers.

FEEL-GOOD STORY OF THE YEAR

Robert MacIntyre wins with his Dad on the bag in Canada

Runners Up:

Ronald Rugumayo becomes the first Ugandan to make a cut on the DP World Tour

Tommy Fleetwood uses local Augusta caddie Gray Moore en route to a T3 finish

Robert MacIntyre wins Scottish Open, becomes national hero

Neal Shipley plays final round at Augusta with Tiger Woods

Tear-jerker central here. Rugumayo’s triumph was such a much-needed antidote to all the talk of money, money and more money in our game. The passion, the pride on his face—again, that’s what this sport’s all about. Fleetwood/Moore were such an easy pair to get behind at the year’s first major, and no matter what happens the rest of Neal Shipley’s career, he will always get to say that he played with (and beat!) Tiger Woods on Sunday at Augusta National.

Bobby Mac gets the win here due in no small part to personal sentimentality. Like so many of you reading this, golf is synonymous with my relationship with my father. This game is, among so many other things, an excuse to spend a ton of quality time with people—time outside, away from screens, free from work or school or chores. It’s a forum for human connection. My relationship with my dad is infinitely stronger because of all the times we’ve spent together on the golf course. It’s our place. We’re far from the only ones.

How special, then, to get your maiden PGA Tour victory with your old man right beside you? Especially for a guy like MacIntyre, who isn’t your prototypical PGA Tour professional. Born and raised in Oban, Scotland, he tried the whole living-in-Florida thing before suffering a nasty bout of homesickness. Like so many Scots, he feels a deep connection to his country and nothing—not better practice facilities, or an easier travel schedule, or better weather—is worth him feeling distant from the place he calls home. So he moved back to Scotland, where he says he’s not treated as Bob the professional golfer. He’s just…Bob. He likes it that way.

As for the MacIntyre family, it’s a classic story of hard work and dedication changing a family’s trajectory. The MacIntyre’s sacrificed for their son to chase his golf dream—a sacrifice that has allowed their son to earn millions, play in the Ryder Cup and win a PGA Tour event with his father next to him.

“It’s unbelievable,” the elder MacIntyre said after that special day in Canada. “I’m a grasscutter, not a caddie.”

WTF/THIS CAN’T BE HAPPENING MOMENT OF THE YEAR: The Arrest of Scottie Scheffler

Runners Up:

Rory McIlroy speeds out of Pinehurst parking lot after heartbreaking loss

Ambulances congregate around Riviera clubhouse for a sick Tiger Woods

Donald Trump and Joe Biden discuss handicaps during presidential debate

Dutch Olympic committee decides its players aren’t good enough to represent their country

A bunch of influencers/content creators play East Lake on the eve of the Tour Championship

Just Stop Oil protests on 18th green at Travelers Championship

Keegan Bradley named Ryder Cup captain out of absolutely nowhere.

Some weird-ass moments in golf this year, and none having to do with the PGA Tour or LIV Golf. This is a very strange sport (looking at you, Kyle Porter) and has been long before we all knew what Yasir al-Rumayyan looked like.

Regarding Scottie’s arrest…I still can’t believe it happened. It was one of those days you remember all the small details. There’ve been three of those since I’ve been on the golf beat: the Tiger Woods car accident, the Framework Agreement, and the Scottie Scheffler arrest.

I remember staying up late that Thursday night for no reason at all. I was alone in a Louisville hotel room scrolling TikTok and the time got away from me. It happens. I then remember making the decision to let myself sleep until 7:30 a.m. that morning. Usually I’d be at the course by then, but I opted for some extra Z’s. I figured I’d just catch the first bit of the morning featured groups on my phone as I headed to the course.

Then I rolled over to a text message linking Jeff Darlington’s original tweet. I genuinely thought it was going to be a link to that spam picture with the guy with the 18-inch penis. But this was real: the No. 1 golfer in the world, the reigning Masters Champion, a guy on the best stretch of golf we’ve seen since prime Tiger Woods, a devout Christian, a new father, squarely in the mix at the second major championship of the year, was behind bars.

If you made me pick guys in the field in order of most likely to be arrested, Scottie might’ve been 156th out of 156. That’s why it all felt so surreal. Not going to name names, but there are a handful of guys who…how should we say this…wouldn’t surprise me if they got into a tussle with law enforcement. Scottie is not one of those guys.

The next 24 hours were a whirlwind. It became clear pretty quickly that this was, more than anything, a giant misunderstanding amidst tragic circumstances—let’s not forget that the cause for the front-gate chaos that morning was a car accident that killed a volunteer—and word starting spreading pretty quickly that the Louisville cognoscenti were going to get him out of there quickly. For the rain delay to actually allow Scheffler to make his tee time, and for him to shoot sixty-fucking-six like nothing happened, only added to the bizarreness of the day. Scheffler’s stock went massively up that day, by the way. The whole thing was absolutely a net positive for him, and the support he received Friday morning on the golf course was genuinely Tiger-like: an entire crowd willing a man to get the golf ball in the hole. He holed his very first approach shot for the day for eagle. You know, the more I think back on this, the crazier it gets. How about Jeff Darlington being on the fucking street at 5:00 a.m. and capturing it all?

We’ll never know how much the arrest impacted his play that week—he finished T8, his chances killed by a really flat Saturday round—or what exactly was going through Officer Gillis’ mind when he followed through with that arrest. But we will always have that mugshot, and we will always have those memes, and we will always have Golf in 2024.

This is the best job in the world and I’m beyond stoked you’re reading my work at Skratch, my new home. Can’t wait for 2025.