The PGA Tour has a new money leader every day.
Scottie Scheffler surpassed Tiger Woods to become the Tour’s all-time career scoring leader at the Tour Championship at East Lake Country Club in Atlanta. Scheffler shot a 4-under 66 in the final round to clinch the win, which includes the FedExCup Playoffs.
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Win Scheffler earned a $10 million check to go with the FedExCup title. This was part of a larger $40 million purse. He now has $130,390,661 in PGA Tour play in his career.
Scheffler’s win was more than enough to propel him past Woods on the all-time list, which he has picked up faster than Woods in his career. Silva earned $120,999,166 in his entire career, and is one of only three players to have earned more than $100 million.
Scheffler almost overcame the woods last week at BMW. He entered that tournament in St. Louis with $119,964,411 in career earnings, just $1,034,755 behind Woods. But Scheffler completed T12, and revealed that he had been dealing with hand, foot and mouth disease for a week. That earned him $426,250, and brought him just $608,505 behind Woods.
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Rory McIlroy is in third with more than $117 million in career earnings.
Scheffler needed only a 13th or better finish at the Tour Championship to overcome Woods. If he failed at that mark, it would likely be him until next season to beat the woods — unless Scheffler made a rare stop on the Tour’s slate.
Woods has been a dominant force on the PGA Tour throughout its career, and is without a doubt the best game ever. The 50-year-old has won 82 times on Tour, which equaled Sam Snead’s all-time wins record. He also won 15 major championships, which is second all time behind only Jack Nicklaus’ 18 titles. Woods is now away from golf as he recovers from various injuries in recent years, and because of his fall and arrest in Florida earlier this year.
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Scheffler has won 22 times on Tour, including the Tour Championship and Sunday’s eight-point victory on August 16 at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. He has won four major championships and is just one US Open away from completing his career grand slam. Scheffler entered this week having earned more than $20.5 million this season alone, with 12 top-10 finishes and five runner-up finishes to go along with two wins.
But Scheffler is just 30, almost 20 years younger than Woods. That’s the reason why it was able to quickly take the forest on the list of coins. The purses on the PGA Tour are much, much larger today than they were when the woods were in their prime. The Tour’s signature event carries a nearly $20 million purse throughout the season.
Tiger Woods earned less than $300,000 for his inaugural PGA Tour in 1997.
(Craig Jones via Getty Images)
Woods earned just $297,000 for his first career Tour win. That was back at the Las Vegas Invitational in 1996. Scheffler’s first Tour win, the 2022 WM Phoenix Open, earned him $1.467 million. Woods earned “only” $486,000 for his first major league championship in 1997, a fraction of the $2.7 million he earned at the Masters. Scheffler’s first win at the Masters in 2022 earned him a $2.7 million check, part of a $15 million purse.
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Scheffler still has a long way to go to catch up with Woods when it comes to overall golf success. But during this dominant stretch of his — he’s won 16 of his 22 tournaments over the past three seasons alone — Scheffler is clearly off to a great start on that front in a new era of the sport.
And the way golf has grown, something that Woods deserves a huge amount of credit for, it was only a matter of time before someone caught him in his career rankings.