For the second year in a row, Scottie Scheffler is the PGA Tour Player of the Year.
The 2022 Masters champion won three times on the PGA Tour in 2023, including the WM Phoenix Open, The Players Championship and the unofficial Hero World Challenge to end his calendar year. The Texan also had a consistent year in the majors, finishing T-10 at the Masters, T-2 at the PGA Championship, third at the US Open and T-23 at the Open Championship.
In the end, Scheffler wound up T-6 in the FedEx Cup standings after his finish at the Tour Championship.
Scheffler prevailed in the player-voted honor, with voting conducted in the first half of December, over Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland, Wyndham Clark and Rory McIlroy. Scheffler received 38 percent of the vote for the Jack Nicklaus Award, though the PGA Tour does not disclose how many players voted for the honor. All PGA Tour members who played in at least 15 FedEx Cup events last season were eligible to vote.
Scheffler is the first player to win consecutive PGA Tour Player of the Year honors since Tiger Woods won three in a row from 2005-2007 and is the fourth player to win the honor in back-to-back seasons since its 1990 creation, joining Fred Couples (1991, 1992), Nick Price (1993, 1994) and Woods (1999-2003, 2005-2007). McIlroy (three times) and Dustin Johnson (twice) are the only other players to win multiple PGA Tour Player of the Year awards.
Scheffler also received the Byron Nelson Award for earning the lowest scoring average on the PGA Tour in 2022-23 at 68.63, which was the lowest on Tour since Tiger Woods in 2009 (68.05).
Jon Rahm announced Dec. 6 that he would leaving the PGA Tour to play LIV Golf. It’s unclear how that may have influenced any voting.
Eric Cole, 35, became the PGA Tour’s Rookie of the Year winner in a peer vote. He won the Arnold Palmer Award over Ludvig Aberg, Nico Echavarria and Vincent Norrman. Cole received 51 percent of the vote for the honor. In his debut season, Cole was a warrior, notching plenty of high finishes on the year, though he did not win an event. He was the only rookie to reach the BMW Championship, finishing 43rd in the FedEx Cup.
Aberg turned pro midway through the season, but he won The RSM Classic on the PGA Tour, in addition to winning on the DP World Tour and playing on the European Ryder Cup team. Norrman and Echavarria both won events, too.
Cole is the second-oldest player to win Rookie of the Year since the honor began in 1990 and is the oldest rookie winner since Todd Hamilton in 2004, who won the award at 39.