By Field Level Media
Aug 26 (Field Level Media) - ATLANTA -- Scottie Scheffler is on the verge of passing Tiger Woods on the all-time earnings list as the current No. 1-ranked golfer in the world seeks another Tour Championship this week at East Lake.
Scheffler and Rory McIlroy are both within striking distance of Woods' PGA Tour earnings record despite a dramatic disparity in victories. Woods won 82 times on the Tour, tied for first all-time. Scheffler, 30, has 21 victories.
McIlroy is $4.5 million
behind Woods' earnings record of $120,999,166. Scheffler, currently second on the list, is just over $1 million from taking over the top spot.
The winner of this week's tournament takes home $10 million. A spot in the top eight would push Scheffler to No. 1 on the Tour's all-time earnings list. Eighth place in the $40 million purse finale takes home $1,070,000.
"You're kind of comparing apples and oranges," Scheffler said Wednesday. "But I think a lot of success we've had out here, especially when you look at it from a financial perspective, Tiger has a lot to do with that. Like I said, it's apples and oranges. The reason our purses are so large today is because of the influence and impact that Tiger had on the game.
"I wouldn't really consider that a Tiger record being broken. I think it's more -- I think it just shows one of the many effects he had on the game of golf in a positive way. Like the Tour is only getting more competitive as it goes forward, and I think that's part of kind of how he played the game."
Scheffler said he's about 95% healthy and mostly over the hand, foot and mouth disease he dealt with last week in St. Louis. Scheffler said it was painful to grip most clubs during the tournament, but he finished tied for 12th at the BMW Championship.
"The only thing, maybe just still a couple of sores in my throat. But other than that, I feel really good," Scheffler said of his recovery.
He played the front nine at East Lake on Tuesday and was headed out for a closer look at the back nine on Wednesday in a bid to win the Tour Championship for the second time in three years.
Scheffler called the newly proposed 2028 playoff format "interesting," characterizing the latest iteration of the PGA Tour postseason as "something new and fun."
But don't ask him to explain it.
"I think the first week is -- it's a little bit hard for me to kind of wrap my head around the group play. Like I said, when I show up at a tournament, I love to be able to compete and give myself a chance to win. To have a full week tournament where there's not a winner, I think, is a bit unusual for me," Scheffler said.
He does understand the mission the Tour took on in overhauling the playoffs while also making sure regular-season consistency -- Scheffler's hallmark -- would be rewarded.
"I think one of the desires we had with looking at the Tour Championship and the FedEx Cup was having an exciting finish to the year while also crowning a season-long champion. I think that's a really hard balance to strike," he said. "With golf, especially looking over the course of the year, that could be -- there's some years where I've had a large lead on the points list going into the final event. If it was a true season-long race from a points perspective, it may not have been that interesting.
"If you want an exciting finish, you can't really reward season-long excellence. So striking the balance there was always difficult. So I think it's important to separate the regular season and then have a fun, interesting way to finish off the season, and in a different format too."
(--Field Level Media)
