Scheffler takes 2024 by storm, PGA Tour-Saudi talks drag on

TORONTO : While professional golf's future is as uncertain now as it was a year ago given the pace of negotiations between the PGA Tour and the Saudi backers of LIV Golf, one thing was made crystal clear in 2024 - Scottie Scheffler is the man to beat.

Scheffler became the first player since Tiger Woods in 2007 to win seven or more times in a PGA Tour season and added an Olympic gold medal during a year in which he spent each week as the No. 1 player in the world and 72 minutes behind bars.

On perhaps the most shocking day in major golf history, Scheffler was handcuffed and booked into a Louisville, Kentucky jail for an alleged assault on a police officer outside the PGA Championship. A mug shot of a bearded Scheffler in an orange jumpsuit is one of golf's lasting images of 2024.

Scheffler was released in time to tee off that morning and the charges against him were dropped 12 days later.

By the time the season ended, Scheffler, 28, had wins at the Masters, Players Championship, Tour Championship and against elite fields in four PGA Tour signature events.

At the U.S. Open, Rory McIlroy endured heartbreak as he led by two shots with five holes to play but missed a pair of short putts over the final three holes to squander his best chance to end a 10-year wait for a fifth major title.

The collapse by McIlroy, who took a three-week break to recover, opened the door for LIV's Bryson DeChambeau, whose near-perfect bunker shot at the final hole - "probably the best shot of my life" - set up the winning par putt.

Xander Schauffele, who began the year as arguably the best active golfer without a major, finally broke through at the PGA Championship, where he birdied the last hole to win by a stroke, before winning the British Open.

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