Writing from Town & Country, Missouri
Wednesday, August 19, 2026
Walter Hagen, the swaggering swatter who made professional golf a spectator sport a century ago, used to waltz into locker rooms and say, “Who’s playing for second?”
Scottie Scheffler, who swaggers quietly but swats similarly to Hagen, could ask the same thing if he was similarly boastful.
Scheffler, the defending champion, is the favorite for the BMW Championship at Bellerive Country Club for a simple reason: he’s here. He’s tops in the world ranking, he won last week in Memphis, and while it was only his second win of the season, he won by eight strokes.
That’s a margin of victory Scheffler has brought back into vogue in the post-Tiger Woods era, and it sends a stark notice to the rest of this elite field – the 50 best players on the PGA Tour – that his midseason slump, which lasted a whole week when he missed the cut at the Scottish Open, is over. He has two wins and 11 other top-four finishes this season, and 50 top-threes in his career. Jack Nicklaus, he was told, had 165 top-threes, 46 in majors.
“I think (consistently) giving yourself chances to win says a lot,” Scheffler said. “I talk a lot about how hard it is and difficult it is to win out here on Tour. The best way to win tournaments is to give yourself as many opportunities as you can. So that is nice for me to have some numbers where I'm giving myself opportunities to win.
“Hopefully I'll be able to continue to do that going forward. But I think the consistency of putting myself in contention week in, week out is something that I'm very proud of.”
Aside from who lifts the J.K. Wadley Trophy this week and the Tour Championship bowl next week, most things have already been decided. Scheffler locked up the top bonus from the pot of gold FedEx distributes by winning last week. He’ll soon find an extra $23 million in his Tour account for leading the playoff parade, that on top of the $10 million bonus for leading the regular season. His pile of finishes should lock up player of the year honors from both the players and the writers.
Asked if winning the Masters and next week’s Tour Championship could change some minds, Rory McIlroy, the only player who could accomplish that, nixed the notion.
“I’m not the player of the year,” McIlroy said. “No chance. Scottie is.”
“There's two weeks to go, but I firsthand watched him for the first two days last week, and he if he keeps playing like that, if he gains nine strokes on the greens every week, we're all F’d,” said McIlroy, using the initial.
There’s one more monetary stat attached to Scheffler this week. If he finishes in the top three, he’ll pass Tiger Woods in career earnings. Scheffler comes in with $119,964,411 to Woods’ $120,999,166. (Rory McIlroy is third with $116,488,372, and can got no better than second if he wins the tournament and with it the $3.6 million first prize.)
“I’m not really close to him in terms of career wins,” Scheffler, with 21 Tour wins to Woods’ 82, said. “What, am I like a fourth of the way there?
“Tiger did a lot for the game of golf and he put us in a position where we're able to earn some pretty good stuff financially, so that's something we're very grateful for. Tiger's contributions to the game, when you look at where the purses were at before he came out on Tour to where they're at now is a pretty stark difference and we're very thankful for his contributions to the game, and hopefully we'll see him back out here competing again soon.”
Scheffler, whose first victory under the PGA Tour umbrella was the WGA-sponsored Evans Scholars Invitational at The Glen Club in 2019, recalled the mini-tour days when of 2018 and prior when he and Doc Redman were barnstorming the country, trying to cash in the small tournaments and make the big time in Monday qualifiers.
“I played I think three mini-tour events, and a couple of them I traveled with my mattress pad in my car because I could sleep on the floor, it was going to be more comfortable than the hotel bed, so I slept on the floor in the hotel rooms,” Scheffler recalled. “I think it was maybe in, I think we were in Lufkin, Texas, I stayed at this house and I just brought my mattress pad, I just slept on the ground, it was just easier. I knew it was going to be a quality bed. Just little stuff like that. Like, good memories and fun stuff and good buddies I still have from this day that I met just from playing golf.”
If that was luxury to Scheffler, there were real rough spots.
“I think my car was running out of oil,” he continued, remembering one trip with Redman. “It was the old Yukon, and I literally had to call my dad, because my dad is Mr. Fix-it, so I never had to fix anything growing up.
“We were somewhere in Nebraska, and I had to call him and say, ‘Hey, dad, this is embarrassing, but can you help me figure out how to check the oil in this car.’ Like, it says it's run out of oil, but everything's fine. Where is it in this car. It was easier than me trying to Google it in the middle of nowhere, I was like, I'll just call my dad, he'll help us figure out.
“Now I know how to check the oil.”
Not that he has to. Just his bank account. And trophy case.
A vote for the Western Open
Rory McIlroy values the traditions of golf. Asked Wednesday if there’s too much money in the game, he first said, “We’re not Bobby Jones out there, not playing for prize money,” and then added, “We turned pro to make money playing golf. I mean, that's a part of it. But I don't think it should be front and center in terms of, like, what we're talking about, right. Like, it should be about other things.
“We should play into the history of, this is the Western Open. This was started in 1899. We should play into that history. That should be what we are talking about when we come to these tournaments. Yes, BMW are putting up the money and that's amazing that they do, and they support golf all over the world. But this tournament has so much history, and I think that some of that as we've gotten into, like, commercializing the PGA Tour, has gotten lost. I think there's a way to thread that needle and be able to do both.”
McIlroy never played in the Western Open when it went by that name, a sponsor, beginning with Beatrice, attached to it beginning in 1987. His first appearance was in the fourth edition sponsored by BMW in 2010. He finished tied for 37th in his only start at Cog Hill, didn’t play in 2011, then won at Crooked Stick in 2012. He has six top-eight finishes since.
Around Bellerive
Adam Scott is the only player in the field who played in the 2008 edition at Bellerive. Then 28, he’s now 46 and still ranked 51st in the world, along with 27th in this week’s field. He also played in the 2018 PGA Championship here, playing in the final group with winner Brooks Kopeka on Sunday. “It’s pretty fresh in my memory, really. Probably because I played well that week,” Scott said. … With a 50-man field, all play is off the first tee all four days. Thursday’s first tee time is 9 a.m. TV coverage starts on ESPN at 9 a.m. and moves to Golf Channel at 1 p.m.. … Cardinals legend Ozzie Smith played in the Akshay Bhatia-Nic Echavarria group in the pro-am. … IndyCar’s Graham Rahal was with So Woo Kim and Tommy Fleetwood. … U.S. senator Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) played with Scheffler and Scott. … A $20 million purse goes a long way. Last place in the 50-man field gets $66,000. The winner banks $3.8 million, or about 62.8 percent of what Jack Nicklaus earned ($5,734,031) in his regular PGA Tour career. Nicklaus, the best player in history, stands 350th on the career money list.
– Tim Cronin