Scottie Scheffler caps off HISTORIC season with Tour Championship win

podcasts or scan that QR code. Listen to the latest episode right now. Breaking news here on CBS sports HQ. Scottie Scheffler from Three Feet Out on 18, sinks the par putt to become the 2024 tour champion as he wins at Eastlake and completes one of the most historic seasons in PGA tour history. The seventh PGA tour title this season. For Scottie, that's the first time a player has done that since Tiger Woods did it in 2007, his 13th career PGA tour title, and it is a four shot victory over Collin Morikawa, who finishes in second place. Morikawa a seventh top five finish with no wins this season. It was up and down round for Scottie, but he put it together at the end and managed to hold for the four shot victory. Theegala finishes third at 24 under par. He had one of the rounds of the day at seven under, and a round of the day went to Russell Henley, who finished in T-4 with Adam Scott and Xander Schauffele at 19 under. After a nine under on Sunday. All right, let's welcome in our golf analyst and First Cut podcast. Oh geez. Rick Gaiman and Kyle Porter. For more on Scottie Scheffler winning the Tour Championship. Gentlemen, let's start with your reaction here. Scottie wasn't exactly playing his best golf heading into Eastlake, but we knew the game was there and perhaps he was maybe saving something. Only he knows if that's true. But as they say, the moment meets the man and the man here was ready. Kyle Yeah, I really thought this round today, guys, was emblematic of his entire season. And what I mean by that is it got going sideways and the thing that he was able to do to fix it was mentally reset. And I think that's the hardest thing to do in golf. I think it's Scottie's greatest skill is his mental ability to kind of reset. We saw him hit a ball nearly out of bounds on the sixth hole. He hits a shank out of the bunker on the eighth hole, and all of a sudden Collin Morikawa is within two and you're like, wait a second, what is this, 2022 all over again? When Rory McIlroy ran him down. But it wasn't because Scottie, as we know, made three straight birdies to basically slam the door on Morikawa and I was just so impressed with what he did there mentally. And I think it's emblematic of his entire year, you know, every time he got going sideways or things started getting out of hand a little bit mentally, he was able to turn them around. And I thought this single round, even those last 12 holes, Rick, were just so representative of what Scottie Scheffler is best at and what he's been best at throughout the entire year. Yeah, he goes from hitting a literal shank on number eight to hitting one of the best four irons we've ever seen on the ninth hole, so he is capable of just forgetting about the bad and focusing on the good. But I do like what Jeremy was getting at here. You know, the Fedex Cup playoffs were kind of weird. If you're Scottie Scheffler when they started, it was really a 12 round marathon. This is a situation where no matter almost no matter what was going to happen in the first two legs of the playoffs, Scottie Scheffler was going to be at ten under par when he kicked it off at East Lake. This week. So I think he was able to kind of work through some of the kinks in his game and really just kind of prepare himself to peak when he got to East Lake, and that's exactly what he did. When you're starting at ten under par and you shoot four rounds of 67 or better, you're going to be incredibly difficult to beat. And this is the this is the ending that the PGA tour season deserved. The guy who was the best player of the year runs away a little bit with the Tour Championship and the Fedex Cup. You know, we always say we don't like comparing anyone to Tiger Woods, but this season has been Tiger like, perhaps even surpassing it. Doug Bell said earlier that with the Tour Championship win, this is the greatest season of the modern era. What say you, Rick? Oh man, that's a that's a bold call, Doug. I I think it's really great. But this is the best non tiger season. The problem that Scottie has and it's a really good problem right. Is that he has so many wins and he's made so much money. We have to look to kind of poke holes in this. He is getting the benefit of some of the better players in the world playing on on Liv golf. He is getting the benefit of these smaller, no cut events in which he absolutely dominated this year. Things that really Tiger Woods did did not have at his disposal. And of course, Tiger never got a chance to play in the Olympics. Didn't happen in his era. So this is I do not want to take anything away from this. A magical season, literally one of the best seasons we've ever seen. But I stopped short of calling it better than a Tiger year. I mean, if the modern era is from 2008 on, then Doug is absolutely correct. But I don't think that's what he's referencing. I disagree and listen like I'm not. I'm with Rick. I'm not taking away anything from Scottie. I've written all year, Jeremy, about how Scottie was tracking toward one of the great seasons of the modern era and perhaps the greatest. I don't think he got there, and most of it is because there was a guy that was in the field on Sunday that won more major championships than him, right? So I think there there was a couple of factors in play. He did. I think it was the maybe the most unique season of the modern era. I think we could say that Masters players gold medal went to jail during a major championship. I mean, there were so many different things that happened that I don't think the season will ever be replicated, but I can't call it the greatest season of the modern era. I think that still goes to a handful of Tiger seasons in the early 2000, and that's a fair point because you know, you're not you're not putting an asterisk next to anything, but it is worth mentioning the fact that there are some pretty good guys on the live tour who might have made this season look a little bit different, had they still been playing on the PGA tour. And gentlemen, now that the season is over, I mean, if you were to if you were to ask ChatGPT to describe the 2024 golf season, what would that summary sentence say? Kyle? Well, if I, if I only got three words, I would say Scottie and Zander, because that was the story of the year. It was it was Scottie Scheffler overall and Xander during that kind of condensed major championship season that we see those guys completely dominated the rest of the world. And to me, Rick, you know, I will talk about this more in depth. I'm sure, on the First Cut podcast on on Sunday and into next week, but they really separated from the rest of the world. And, you know, I think it's interesting that Zander was even able to kind of tether himself to Scottie. I mean, we're talking about in a legitimate way. We're talking about Scottie season up there with Tiger Vijay, all these great seasons of the last 40 years. And yet I still think Zander is in that conversation a little bit. And that's a testament to what he did at the major championships, how good he played, how much he elevated his game, even, even more so than it already was throughout this year. So I think the story of this year is, is Scottie and Zander separation from everybody else in the world, from Rory, from Collin Morikawa, from all these other guys, in in 2024. To me, that's the story of this season. Yeah. They were absolutely splendid. I'll give you two words and mine are fields matter, right? I mean, I think that what we saw again this year is that major championships are just the absolute best, most pure form of golf. And it's because we get everybody battling in the same spot. And I actually believe that signature events are overall very good. I have I have kind of a beef with a little bit of the structure and how they are selected, but if you look back at the last handful of years, the amount of times that we would get 10 or 20 of the top players in the world playing the same event would be very, very rare. It might have happened 3 or 4, maybe five times in a season. We're now getting that 12 to 15 times a year, depending on how you want to count those fields. And it really matters now. It creates other problems where it feels like there's a second tour of the PGA. And what do we do about major championships and signature events and all of that stuff? But I really feel like we are in an era where having all the best players in the world teeing it up against each other regularly is the best path forward. As we turn the page towards the off season and start to look towards next season. Rick, who are you most looking forward to seeing next year? Oh so many. It's hard to narrow it down to one, but I think Aaron Ray is probably on the top of the list for me. He did not have a great week at the Tour Championship, but his year in totality was awesome and he's always been one of the most pure ball strikers that we have on planet Earth, and he hits it off the center of the clubface every single time. He just can't putt except recently, he started to work with a new coach. He started to read, putting surfaces a little bit better, and we saw dividends pay off immediately with his win at the Wyndham Championship. So now you look forward to 2025. If he can carry over those gains on the putting surfaces, he has an opportunity to be one of maybe the top eight players on the PGA tour. So really looking forward to seeing if he's able to kind of keep this late year momentum going into 2025. Yeah, I've got to somebody else who I thought flew under the radar a little bit this year. He popped up at times. You know, we talked about him a lot at, at some specific times. But man to make it to that top 30 and into the Tour Championship at the age that he's at 20, I think he's 22 now. Maybe, maybe still 21 or just turn 22. That's pretty special stuff. And I love guys. As you know, Rick, who, keep progressing year over year. Their strokes gain number gets a little bit better year over year. Aaron is on that list and Akshay is as well. I'm really I'm interested to see what kind of leap he makes into that age. 23 season in in 2025 and even beyond that potentially could be on the Presidents Cup team for the United States later this fall, which could do wonders for him going into 2025. Stunned that neither of you said Ludvig Oberg, he's already he's a top five player, all right. He's already there. So we don't need to watch him because we already know that he's good, so we don't need him to make the jump up. But yeah, good stuff as always. Gentlemen, our golf analyst Rick Gammon and Kyle Porter recapping Scottie Scheffler's win at the Tour Championship on Sunday. He dethrones Viktor Hovland and caps off what some have said. Doug Bell the greatest season in the modern era of golf, certainly one of the most historic seasons. And they'll be recapping that season and talking about Scottie Scheffler s win over on the First Cut podct. You can download and follow