The best player on the PGA Tour, Scottie Scheffler, made it pretty clear last week: The FedEx Cup Playoffs? Sure, they’re great. But they’re not really his thing.

“I’ve talked about it for the last few years, I think it’s silly,” Scheffler said before the FedEx St. Jude Championship last week at TPC Southwind. “You can’t call it a season race and reduce it to a tournament.”

The top 70 finishers in the FedEx Cup qualify for the St. Jude, which was won by Hideki Matsuyama. Scheffler (-14) tied for 4th in Memphis. The top 50 finishers in the overall standings after this event qualified for the BMW Championship in Colorado. The top 30 finishers in Castle Springs qualified for the Tour Championship in East Lake (August 29).

Scheffler, who finished fourth in Memphis, has a big lead in the points race. Rory McIlroy, the only three-time FedEx Cup winner, disagreed with Scheffler.

“I love this format because if it weren’t for this format, none of us would have a chance against Scottie because he’s so far ahead,” McIlroy, who won the PGA Tour twice this year, said in Memphis.

“I think it makes the Tour Championship more exciting from a consumer perspective. Is it the fairest reflection of who the best player of the year was? Probably not. But I think at this point we’re not concerned with complete fairness; we’re concerned with entertainment and providing the best product possible.”

In front of the BMW, Scheffler went back to his initial comments. He also revealed his cautious commitment to the PGA Tour’s postseason system.

Scottie Scheffler downplays FedEx Cup

“You have to find the balance between having a good TV product and identifying the best player for the season, and right now — as I said last week — it’s not technically a season race,” Scheffler said at Castle Springs. “Basically, I would describe it as you have to play solid golf for most of the season and then have a really good playoff.”

“It’s the FedExCup playoffs. The winner of the FedExCup played the best in those three weeks of the playoffs. Some years that’s the best player of the whole year, other years not.”

Billy Horschel – who spoke to the media before Scheffler and was asked about his previous comments – even went so far as to compare his own victory over McIlroy in the 2014 FedEx Cup to arguably the greatest Cinderella Super Bowl run in NFL history.

“Scottie said that was silly. I don’t agree. The best player in the regular season was never rewarded. I won the FedExCup in 2014. Rory McIlroy was clearly the best player that year. He had won two majors. He had a good start. I was 69th at FedEx. I missed the first cut.

“I go second, win, win and win the FedExCup. It’s no different than when the New York Giants beat the New England Patriots and started the playoffs 9-7, and when the Patriots went undefeated and then won the Super Bowl.”

“Could we reward the regular season a little more? Sure we can,” Horschel added. “But this is the playoffs. Anything can happen.”

Scheffler, perhaps understandably, doesn’t feel he has anything left to prove after a historic season. And the FedEx Cup playoffs haven’t been kind to him. Scheffler has twice come into the East Lake team – which uses a tiered hitting system based on the points race – as the top seed, only to falter.

“If I really said I wanted to play my best golf at East Lake, this might have been a week I would have taken a break because there is so much emphasis on East Lake,” Scheffler said in front of the BMW. “I’ve kind of realized this year that I don’t like playing the week before a major championship. And with East Lake being so important in the race for the entire season, if I really envision winning at East Lake at the beginning of the year, this would be a week that I might take a break, especially given my points lead.

“But at the end of the day, no trophy is more important than any other. Yes, I would love to win the FedExCup, but I would also love to win this tournament. I’ve never won a playoff event, so that would be something that would be really cool.”

Scheffler is guaranteed to start the 2024 Tour Championship in first or second place.