Scheffler Beats Rahm And McIlroy To Win Second Successive PGA Tour Player Of The Year Award

Scottie Scheffler won the PGA Tour Player of the Year award for the second year running, becoming the first back-to-back winner since Tiger Woods won a hat-trick between 2005-07.

The World No.1 claimed the Jack Nicklaus Award ahead of Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy, Viktor Hovland and Wyndham Clark - in a vote of PGA Tour players who played a minimum of 15 events last season.

Scheffler received 38% of the vote, according to the PGA Tour, which did not release the polling numbers for the other four players in contention.

Rahm was the other leading contender after he won four times last year, including victory at The Masters, and there have already been some suggestions that his move to LIV Golf may have contributed to him missing out.

The PGA Tour says voting for the award took place between 1-15 December - Rahm made the move to LIV Golf on 7 December.

Nobody can deny though that Scheffler also had a stellar season, and statistically one of the best in PGA Tour history.

Scheffler also won the Byron Nelson Award for the best scoring average of the season - with his mark of 68.63 being the lowest ever recorded by a player not named Tiger Woods, who owns the top six averages in the record books.

Finishing the year where he started it as World No.1, Scheffler won twice and finished with 13 top fives and 17 top 10s - which are both the most by a single player since 2005.

The 27-year-old, who also had 18 consecutive top 12 finishes, set a new PGA Tour record for most Official Money won in a season when he pocketed $21,014,342 - smashing his own record from 2022 of $14,046,910.

"Obviously an honor to receive the award," said Scheffler as he picked up the trophy ahead of the PGA Tour's first event of 2024 - The Sentry in Hawaii.

"Anything that you receive voted on by your peers is very special to me and being able to go home with this trophy two years in a row now is very special. 

"I think the body of work I put in last year with the consistency and finishing top most of the weeks that I played I was very proud of that consistency."

Scheffler, who was asked about beating a four-win Rahm to the award, added: "I just think it depends on what the guys kind of looked at for their vote. 

"I guess this year they really kind of appreciated my consistency. Like I said, I was very proud of that. The way I played the entire year, I think I maybe only had one or two starts that were - that I would categorize as not great, but other than that I had a lot of starts where I just played really solid golf and to do that for an entire season out here I think is very difficult. I'm very proud of that aspect of my game."

Scheffler is just the fourth back-to-back winner of the Jack Nicklaus Award since its inception in 1990, with Fred Couples (1991, 1992) and Nick Price (1993, 1994) joining Woods, who won five in a row from 1999-2003 and three straight from 2005.

The only other multiple winners are McIlroy, who has won three PGA Tour Player of the Year awards, and Dustin Johnson, who has won the honor twice.