Scottie Scheffler ends winless drought with dominant FedEx St. Jude Championship victory

Scottie Scheffler is, once again, a winner on the PGA Tour. It’s been a minute.

Scheffler ran away with the FedEx St. Jude Championship on Sunday in Memphis, shooting a final-round 66 to finish at 17 under par, a remarkable eight shots ahead of the man in second place, Si Woo Kim.

It is his second win of 2026, but his first in nearly seven months — the longest he’s gone between victories since 2023, when he won The Players Championship in March and was held out of the winner’s circle until the Hero World Challenge in December.

“Statistics are one thing, but being able to win golf tournaments is another, and this is a lot better feeling than having statistically another good week,” Scheffler told CBS on the 18th green.

The actual final round was devoid of drama, but it did have one oddity.

Scheffler got the bad bounce of all bad bounces on the par-5 third hole. Playing his third shot out of the bunker left of the green, the ball landed on a sprinkler head and instead of rolling toward the pin, bounced through the green, down a small hill, and into the water. He had to get up-and-down for bogey, and his lead was suddenly one shot.

But by the time he birdied the fifth hole to get back to 13 under, his lead had grown to four. Then he birdied the sixth for good measure. Five strokes up on his closest competitor at the time, Sungjae Im, Scheffler’s lead just kept on growing as he worked through the final nine holes.

His second win by at least eight strokes, tying Ernie Els, Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson for second-most on the PGA Tour in the last 40 years (Tiger Woods has 10), Scheffler had five birdies and just the one bogey.

To claim that Scheffler’s 2026 season has been anything less than a success would be judging it by a Ricky Bobby-esque philosophy that goes against 125 or so years of golf history. Yes, it’s not as good as 2022 (four wins, including the Masters), 2023 (three wins, including The Players Championship), 2024 (nine wins, including The Players, the Masters and the Olympics), or 2025 (six wins, including the PGA Championship and the Open Championship).

He’s still been the best player in the world, consistently. He’s missed one cut, which was the only time all season he’s finished outside of the top 25. He’s finished in the top 10 at 10 tournaments, second at the Masters, and inside the top five at two other majors.

But the gap between Scheffler and the rest has narrowed. Matt Fitzpatrick and Viktor Hovland both beat him in playoffs, and Cameron Young also came out ahead in a toe-to-toe battle. There were many theories as to why this happened, most of which did not give enough credit to a field that has spent four years chasing the 30-year-old Texan.

Now, at the start of the FedEx Cup playoffs, Scheffler has his groove back. Rounds of 68 on Thursday and Saturday were sandwiched between a tremendous 61 on Friday. It was three shots better than anyone else in Round 2, with 11 birdies — including the first five holes and six of the first seven.

He began Sunday with a two-stroke lead over Sam Burns and Im. A final 18 holes that felt like the best of Scheffler — always in position, with a hot putter — made it a rout.

It left the cut to 50 for next week’s BMW Championship the best source of intrigue  Sunday, but even that was lacking. Jordan Spieth and Keith Mitchell both took their shot at getting into the second round of the playoffs, but could not get the score they needed.

Mitchell is the only player who was in the top 50 at the beginning of the week who ended up outside it, replaced by Im.