The PGA Tour announced its nominees for two major end-of-season awards, with Scottie Scheffler leading the voting.
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Scottie Scheffler may be the runaway favorite for PGA Tour Player of the Year, but does the PGA Tour Rookie of the Year race have the potential to be a close vote? We’ll find out next month.
The Tour recently released the nominees for its 2024 Jack Nicklaus Award (Player of the Year) and Arnold Palmer Award (Rookie of the Year), and the trio of players set for the top prize is no surprise: Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele and Rory McIlroy.
Scheffler, the world No. 1, won seven of his 19 starts, which included victories in the Masters, The playersRBC Heritage, Memorial Championship and Tournament. (He also won gold in the Olympics.) Scheffler is seeking to become the first player to win the Jack Nicklaus Award three years in a row since Tiger Woods won in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
Scheffler’s seven-win season has made him the betting favorite over Schauffele, who won the PGA Championship and Open Championship to win the first two major titles of his career.
McIlroy, who has won the award three times before, won the 2024 Zurich Classic and Truist Championship.
Like Scheffler with player of the year, Nick Dunlap is a front-runner for the rookie award. The 20-year-old won twice last season, which included his win at The American Express while still an amateur. That victory – the first by an amateur since Phil Mickelson in 1991 — earned him a PGA Tour membership. Dunlap then turned professional, and when he won the Barracuda Championship six months later, he became the first player in Tour history to win as both an amateur and a professional in the same season.
The other Rookie of the Year nominees are Max Greyserman, Jake Knapp and Matthieu Pavon. Greyserman had three runner-up finishes in 26 starts. Knapp won Mexico Open at Vidanta; and Pavon won the Farmers Insurance Open. Pavon, who finished 17th in the FedEx Cup standings, was also the only rookie to qualify for the tournament championship.
Both awards are voted on by Tour players who played in at least 15 events during the 2024 season. Voting closes next week and winners will be announced by the end of the year.
