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The 2021-22 PGA TOUR season was unforgettable for many reasons. A season that began with one budding star picking up his third win (Max Homa at the Fortinet Championship) was capped off 11 months later by the biggest final-round comeback in TOUR Championship history (Rory McIlroy, 6 back). What happened in between was unforgettable, too. These are the stats and notes that best tell the story of the 2021-22 PGA TOUR season. The breakout superstar Scottie Scheffler began the year as the highest-ranked player without a PGA TOUR win. Less than five months later, he was a major champion, the FedExCup leader, and the No. 1 player in the world. On Super Bowl Sunday in Phoenix, he beat reigning FedExCup champ Patrick Cantlay in a playoff for his first PGA TOUR win. When he won the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play just 42 days later, he was tops in the OWGR. It’s by far the fastest a player has gone from winless on the PGA TOUR or DP World Tour to world number one – the previous-fastest sprint to the top came from Tiger Woods, who did it in 252 days. Scheffler made his first start as No. 1 at the Masters, the first player to do that since Ian Woosnam in 1991, and like Woosnam, Scheffler won. It was his first major title and fourth win in six PGA TOUR starts – the first time anyone had gone four-for-six since Jason Day in 2015. (Day’s run also included his first major win, at the PGA Championship at Whistling Straits, and an ascent to world number one.) The most recent player, before Scheffler, to collect his fourth win of the season at the Masters: Arnold Palmer in 1960. The scoring records Before the Sentry Tournament of Champions, there had never been a 72-hole PGA TOUR event where two players finished regulation at 30 under par or lower. The week of the Sentry, there were three. Jon Rahm made 32 birdies, tying the record for a 72-hole tournament, and he didn’t even win. At the Sony Open in Hawaii the following week Hideki Matsuyama and Russell Henley were tied through four rounds with a total score of 257. When Matsuyama won the playoff, Henley received the dubious honor of lowest 72-hole total in PGA TOUR history for a player who did not win. Sebastian Muñoz became the first player in TOUR history to record two rounds of 60 in the same season – he got his first at The RSM Classic, and second at the AT&T Byron Nelson. At the PGA Championship at Southern Hills, Justin Thomas played his last 13 holes (including the playoff against Will Zalatoris) in 6 under to win. He was seven shots off the lead to start the day. The comeback tied the largest by a winner in PGA Championship history (John Mahaffey in 1978), and was the biggest in a men’s major since Paul Lawrie was 10 back at the 1999 Open Championship. Thomas’ win was not just his second major, but also his 15th PGA TOUR title. Since World War II, only five other players have won 15 PGA TOUR events, including multiple majors, before the age of 30: Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy. All four men’s major winners in 2022 were under 30, the first time that’s happened since the inception of the Masters in 1934. Players in their 20s had previously won three of the four majors 17 different times. The right mix of man and tournament/golf course After two years of cancelations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the fans at the RBC Canadian Open were primed for a thrilling week. The players delivered. In the final round, Justin Rose flirted with 59 but settled for 60, becoming the first European player in PGA TOUR history with multiple rounds of 60 or better in his career. Thomas, McIlroy and Tony Finau were electric, shooting a combined 20 under par. When McIlroy came out on top, it marked the first time in his PGA TOUR career he had successfully defended a title. Nine years after winning the U.S. Amateur with his little brother on the bag at The Country Club in Brookline, Massachusetts, Matt Fitzpatrick returned to claim his first career major victory. It marked just the second time in men’s golf history that a player won the U.S. Amateur and the U.S. Open at the same course – Nicklaus also did it at Pebble Beach. Fitzpatrick hit 17 greens in regulation in the final round at Brookline, becoming just the third major winner in the last 30 years to hit 17 or more GIR on Sunday of a major win. The breakout rookie Cameron Young’s seven top-three finishes on the season included the PGA Championship (T-3) and The Open Championship (2nd). As well as he played all season, though, it did not include a victory. Young is the first player to have seven or more top-three finishes but no wins in a single PGA TOUR season since Payne Stewart in 1993. Young wound up with more than $6.5M in official earnings – the most in TOUR history for a rookie and the most for a player in a season without a win. Sahith Theegala, the other rookie to make the TOUR Championship, shot the most rounds in the 60s on TOUR (55). Davis Riley (6 top-10 finishes), Chad Ramey (won Corales Puntacana Championship) and Tom Kim (both winners this season), help make this rookie class one of the strongest in years. Feel-good win of the season Arguably the most cathartic win was by perpetual major contender Will Zalatoris in a playoff at the FedEx St. Jude Championship. By outlasting Sepp Straka, Zalatoris banked his first PGA TOUR title in the first stop of the three-week FedExCup Playoffs. His incredible consistency in the majors early in his career doesn’t happen often: at the U.S. Open, he picked up his sixth top-10 finish in just his ninth major start. The last player to do that was Antonio Cerda, an Open Championship fixture in the 1950s. When Zalatoris got the win at TPC Southwind he was 14th in the Official World Golf Ranking. That marked the highest World Ranking by any American player at the time of his first TOUR win, just ahead of Scheffler at TPC Scottsdale earlier in the year (15th). The winners who overcame calamity The PGA TOUR has been tracking hole-by-hole scoring data for 40 seasons. From 1983 through July of this year there were more than 1,700 official stroke play events contested, and never was a tournament won by a player who started the week with triple bogey or worse. Then it happened twice in August. At the Wyndham Championship, Tom Kim began his week with a quadruple bogey. His long, incredible climb back up the leaderboard – which included a front nine 27 in the final round – ended in a runaway five-stroke victory. Three weeks later in Atlanta, Rory McIlroy – who was already ceding six “Starting Strokes” to Scheffler – opened his tournament with triple bogey and went on to win. The sneakiest, most dramatic improvement The most impressive turnaround for McIlroy didn’t come at the TOUR Championship, or not just there, anyway. It was a facet of his game that went from burden to brilliant over just a few months. Through the Masters, McIlroy was struggling with his wedges: From 50 to 125 yards away, he ranked 208th of 209 qualified players in proximity to the hole (24 feet, 1 inch). From his next start – the Wells Fargo Championship – through the end of the year, he completely turned that around. His average of 14 feet, 1 inch from that point through the end of the season was tops on the PGA TOUR.

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Admittedly, the scope of the event was beyond anything he had experienced. But it wasn’t until Greg Turner walked to the first tee for the opening match of the 1998 Presidents Cup in Melbourne that he understood just how different it all was. “From the clubhouse to the first tee, it was a long walk and here we were a pair of Kiwis marching through a throng of screaming Aussies. It was a maelstrom,� said Turner, side-by-side with countryman Frank Nobilo. “Kiwis hadn’t had that much support from Aussies since Gallipoli.� Aussies and Kiwis? Together with South Africans? For a common cause? Seriously? “We’re rugby countries,� Nobilo said. “It’s combative between us.� But in December of 1998, it was Three Musketeers-like, that “all-for-one-and-one-for-all� stuff which worked rather nicely. Indeed, if this year’s International Team needs inspiration for the upcoming task at hand against the heavily favored Americans at Royal Melbourne, players need only refer to what happened 21 years ago. In fact, perhaps this year’s International Team captain, Ernie Els, can regale them, for a little more than a year after winning a second U.S. Open, the 29-year-old South African in 1998 was a key component in a stunning performance. That year, the Presidents Cup was played outside the United States for the first time – and oh, how it traveled, all the way Down Under to Royal Melbourne. The majestic links in the famed Sandbelt region had been flavored by few Americans, but Els & Co. knew it well. “Like the back of my hand,� said Australia’s Craig Parry. He was then 32 “and I had first seen Royal Melbourne when I was 5. I loved everything about it and felt it was a great place for us.� Exactly how great could never have been envisioned, but Els, who went 3-1-1, would confirm that 21 years later, the International Team’s lone win in 12 editions of the Presidents Cup still ignites an infinite measure of respect. “I have a photo of our winning team, smiling and celebrating. It’s up in the bar of my house,� said Parry, the enthusiasm in his voice unmistakable. “One of the best memories of my life.� What often reverberates when the 1998 Presidents Cup is brought up is not praise for the late Peter Thomson’s captaincy or the brilliant play of a rookie from Japan, Shigeki Maruyama, or the dynamic Australian tandem of Greg Norman and Steve Elkington. No, you often get dismissals because the Americans had to travel just before Christmas (the competition was held Dec. 11-13) and it was their off-season, so most of the team was rusty. In fact, Tiger Woods, who went 2-3 that week as the No. 1 player in the world, will be playing captain this time around and told his team he doesn’t want a repeat of ’98. “We weren’t ready to play,� he told them, “and we got beat pretty badly.� Excuses flavored red, white and blue tried to explain the 3-1/2 to 1-1/2 deficit the Americans faced after the opening foursomes or the 7-3 hole they dug themselves on Day 1. It was pretty much over after the Internationals won the morning foursomes on Day 2, 4-1/2 to 1/2, and what got the blame was the schedule-maker, or the lack of American enthusiasm, or even Jack Nicklaus’ captaincy. Rarely are the Internationals given credit. Disrespectful, no? “It did have the elements of a perfect storm,� Nobilo said. “We were desperate for a win and we nearly had won in 1996 (a one-point U.S. win) when we really came together. So, we felt confident in 1998. Maybe they helped us, certainly the course helped us, but we truly had a great team chemistry that year. Such a cool experience.� Unlike Nicklaus, who was hand-delivered the world’s top four-ranked players – Woods, Mark O’Meara, David Duval, Davis Love III – and five others in the top 20, Thomson had the proverbial top-heavy squad. Els (No. 5), Nick Price (6), Vijay Singh (9), Elkington (16) and Norman (18) were established world-class players, but from there, it was a pair of unheralded Aussies (Stuart Appleby, Parry), two unknown entities from Japan (Maruyama and Naomichi “Joe� Ozaki), and from a country of very few golf courses, Paraguay, came Carlos Franco. Oh, and to round out the team, Thomson – a legend in Australia – chose a couple of Kiwis, Nobilo and Turner. It was a move that unsettled many golf fans Down Under, Aussies and New Zealanders being bitter enemies. “But Peter probably liked the fact that Frank and I had played a lot of Dunhill Cups together,� said Turner, a four-time European Tour winner. “Give him credit. He probably felt it was about the team, not the individuals.� Banded together, the International Team consisted of seven players ranked outside the top 30 in the OWGR, with four outside the top 50. Five of the 12 players had not won anywhere that season. On the flip side, each of the 12 Americans had won that year on the PGA TOUR (O’Meara capturing two majors, Lee Janzen one). No wonder Thomson described the U.S. as “the mightiest team ever assembled.� The National Sportsbook of Australia agreed, making Nicklaus’ team overwhelming favorites. A $1 wager would only return $1.40. Parry insists that he was among 12 people in Australia that week who thought the Presidents Cup would be competitive. “The Americans were better – on paper. But we were better on grass,� he said. Better in ways that could never have been imagined and to a degree that was inexplicable. Maybe there was something to the whispers that circulated that week, that the Americans were not quite a cohesive unit. Even Nicklaus conceded to reporters that players had approached him Wednesday night, voicing concerns about being in the dark about the pairings and not having a say in the process. How much that played into the outcome is difficult to say. But when the competition ended, the American head-shaking began in earnest. “The whole picture of this thing is hard to believe. We are in a state of shock,� said Mark Calcavecchia, after playing Turner to a halve in a singles match that was rendered meaningless. So overwhelming was the International’s 20-1/2 to 11-1/2 drubbing that it was virtually clinched in the first few singles games. If there was an indelible image of the ’98 Presidents Cup, likely it was the radiant smile seemingly cemented on the new face. Maruyama would win the first of his three PGA TOUR tournaments two years later, but back then he was just 29 and barely known outside of his native Japan. That he was embraced by Aussies and Kiwis, South Africans and even a Paraguayan, said it all about captain Thomson’s team. “He was infectious the minute we got together,� Nobilo recalled of the man who would be nicknamed “The Smiling Assassin.� Parry was perhaps the one player who needed no introduction. He had played a lot in Japan and “I knew Shigeki was a very, very good player. He was quite aggressive, but it’s not easy to play Royal Melbourne that way.� Thomson saw Parry as Maruyama’s foursomes partner and the man affectionately called “Popeye� didn’t hesitate. “I knew a little Japanese and I guided him around.� Parry is being modest, at least according to Maruyama. “Craig Parry helped me a lot and covered my mistakes,� said Maruyama, who splits his time now between Los Angeles and Japan and keeps close tabs on his only child, Sean, now a sophomore on the golf team at UCLA. Sean was born 18 months after his father’s 1998 heroics at Royal Melbourne and was just three months old when Shigeki played in the 2000 Presidents Cup. But they have been united at two Presidents Cups since then – in 2013 at Muirfield Village, when Sean attended and helped as interpreter for his father, who served as an assistant to captain Price; then, in 2017 when Shigeki attended to watch his son play in the Junior Presidents Cup in New Jersey. Still, it was that week in Melbourne 21 years ago that remains unforgettable, and Shigeki heaped praise on his Aussie friend. “I believed I could contribute a little bit, but our victory is 90 percent thanks to him,� he said. If the Parry-Maruyama win in foursomes over Janzen and Scott Hoch in that first session opened eyes, what they did the next day was stunning – a 1-up victory over Woods and Fred Couples. Throw in a pair of four-ball wins alongside his countryman, Ozaki, and a singles decision over John Huston, and Maruyama registered what established an International Team record, 5-0 perfection. (That was matched in 2015 by Branden Grace.) Parry’s willingness to take Maruyama wasn’t the only example of what helped draw the team together. While Thomson was committed to the teams of Norman and Elkington (3-0-1), Els and Singh (2-1-0), and Nobilo-Turner (2-1-0), Price and Parry raised their hands to partner with Franco, who might have been the biggest outsider on the team, a Paraguayan who played in Japan and had never been to Australia. “We are so many different nations, different cultures, it’s sometimes difficult,� Nobilo said. “But that week was different, and we discovered that Carlos was a character. On our bus rides to and from the course, he started the karaoke. It takes someone to break the ice.� Franco was 0-2-1 that week, but his mates easily covered him. The Internationals won each of the four team sessions, split in singles, 6-6, and simply gave the home crowd an excessive amount to cheer about. That it started from an opening game that featured a pair of Kiwis was improbable, to say the least. “I mean, fair to say we weren’t raging favorites,� laughed Turner, who saw it as a good thing he and Nobilo were taking on O’Meara and Duval. “In some ways, it unburdened us. They were Nos. 1 and 3 in the world. The public probably thought we had 1-in-20 chance of winning.� How that opening game played out proved to be an omen for the International Team. The 40-foot putt Nobilo made at the first hole got the crowd into it and it only got better. Clinging to a 1-hole lead at 17, Nobilo slipped home a twisting 3-footer to get a halve. Then, at 18, with O’Meara having stuff his approach to 6 feet, Turner – urged by Nobilo to hit 6-iron and not 7-iron – landed his shot more than 40 feet from the hole. “Well, you better make the putt,� Turner said to Nobilo. Guess what? His fellow Kiwi did, thanks to a quirk of fate. Nobilo said his caddie, Anthony “Antman� Knight, insisted he knew the line, having had this putt when he caddied for Wayne Riley, who won the 1991 Australian Open at Royal Melbourne with a 40-footer on the last hole. “No doubt in his mind,� said Nobilo, so why not? He trusted Knight and because he did, “the crowd went absolutely nuts – and it’s unusual to get the Aussies behind the Kiwis.� That birdie roll fell and stunned the O’Meara-Duval team. What followed was the first of three wins by the Elkington-Norman team and it was if the wrapper was off the crowd’s belief that maybe, just maybe, the Internationals could hang in there. There was credit to spread up and down the lineup, said Nobilo, but a good dose of it had to go to Elkington. Elkington in his prime was a premier ball-striker, an immense talent. Most of all, “he was totally invested in the Presidents Cup,� Nobilo said. “He got it. He was the one who fired the team up on the bus ride in the morning. He wasn’t just into his game, he was to everyone else on the team what a cornerman is to a boxer.� So, when it was over, and the International Team had sent recorded a resounding victory, Elkington understandably took great joy. “We creamed them,� he said to reporters. No one can say he was wrong.

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Fresh off his impressive Presidents Cup performance, Sungjae Im looks to defend his title at the Shriners Children’s Open as the PGA TOUR heads west for its annual stop in Las Vegas. FIELD NOTES: 2021 FedExCup champion Patrick Cantlay, No. 4 on the Official World Golf Ranking, is set to tee it up … Cantlay’s Presidents Cup teammate Max Homa returns to action … Tom Kim, who electrified the golf world at the Presidents Cup with his spirit in representing the International Team, will compete at TPC Summerlin … Twelve players ranked inside the top 50 in the world will head to Vegas … Joining Kim and Sungjae Im from the Presidents Cup’s International Team are Cam Davis, Si Woo Kim, K.H. Lee, Mito Pereira, Taylor Pendrith and Christiaan Bezuidenhout … Five major champions are set to play … More than a dozen players with connections to Las Vegas are ready to roll the dice, including UNLV alums and recent Korn Ferry Tour grads Harry Hall and Taylor Montgomery … Sponsor exemptions include Charley Hoffman and Thomas Detry, who shared the 36-hole lead at the Sanderson Farms Championship … Other sponsor exemptions include rising stars Chris Gotterup, Cole Hammer, Quinn Riley and Patrick Welch … Jason Day returns to action in Vegas. He’s played the event only once before (missing the cut two years ago) … Martin Laird, who won in 2009 and 2020, is looking for some more magic in Las Vegas. FEDEXCUP: Winner receives 500 FedExCup points. COURSE: TPC Summerlin, par 71, 7,255 yards. A staple venue on the PGA TOUR’s schedule, TPC Summerlin will once again challenge the TOUR’s best with lush bentgrass greens, numerous water features, and a layout that boasts raw landscape features and meanders through arroyos and canyons. Last year, Sungjae Im dominated the Bobby Weed design (with Fuzzy Zoeller as player consultant) with an impressive display of ball-striking; he ranked No. 1 in both greens in regulation and Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green. 72-HOLE RECORD: 260, Ryan Moore (2012), Webb Simpson (2013), Sungjae Im (2021) 18-HOLE RECORD: 59, Chip Beck (Round 3, 1991 at Sunrise GC). TPC Summerlin record: 60, J.J. Henry (Round 1, 2013), Rod Pampling (Round 1, 2016) STORYLINES: Patrick Cantlay has hit the jackpot at TPC Summerlin. The 2021 TOUR Player of the Year feasts on the Vegas layout, having finished first in 2017, runner-up in 2018 and 2019, and eighth in 2020 … Max Homa, meanwhile, is hoping to change his luck in Vegas. This is his sixth start at TPC Summerlin, and he has four missed cuts. Homa is, however, coming into the week off a perfect 4-0-0 week at the Presidents Cup after a win at the Fortinet Championship to open the 2022-23 TOUR season … Despite the International Team’s Presidents Cup loss, there was lots of positive momentum coming from that team room in Charlotte. LAST TIME: Sungjae Im fired a tremendous 9-under 62 in the closing round to rip to a tournament scoring record-tying 24 under and win by four shots. Im’s final round was highlighted by seven birdies in an eight-hole stretch around the turn at TPC Summerlin. Im was one of four players who had at least a share of the lead on the first nine Sunday in Las Vegas but separated himself from the pack with an impressive effort into the back nine. Funny enough, Im’s first victory came in his 50th TOUR start while his second, the Shriners, came in his 100th. Im’s final-round 62 was the lowest by a winner in Las Vegas since Smylie Kaufman fired a 61 in 2016. Matthew Wolff finished runner-up while Marc Leishman, Rory Sabbatini and Adam Schenk finished tied for third. Sabbatini shot a front-nine 28 Sunday and was briefly tied for the lead but couldn’t keep the pedal down as he made the turn. HOW TO FOLLOW Television: Thursday-Sunday, 5 p.m.-8 p.m. ET. Saturday, Sunday, 4 p.m.-7 p.m. Radio: Thursday-Friday, 2 p.m.–8 p.m. ET. Saturday-Sunday, 3 p.m.-8 p.m. (PGA TOUR Radio on SiriusXM and PGATOUR.com/liveaudio) For outside of the U.S., click here for GOLFTV powered by the PGA TOUR PGA TOUR LIVE PGA TOUR Live is available exclusively on ESPN+ • Featured Groups: traditional PGA TOUR LIVE coverage of two concurrent featured groups

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