Scottie Scheffler finished the 2026 PGA Tour regular season on top of the FedEx Cup points list for the fourth time in the last five seasons. He's almost a mortal lock to rake in $23 million for his performance -- but not quite yet.
Despite just the one win in his season-opener at the American Express, as well as his first missed cut in nearly four years at the Genesis Scottish Open, Scheffler was a machine. He finished second five different times, including a pair of playoff losses, among 11 top-10 finishes in 17 starts. He racked up a ton of FedEx Cup points, heading into the playoffs with a 794-point lead over second-place Matt Fitzpatrick.
However, unlike last season, Scheffler didn't earn a massive payday before the playoffs even started.
In 2026, the PGA Tour reconfigured how the $100 million FedEx Cup bonus pool was paid out, making tweaks to the 2025 format which saw the Tour Championship become a $40 million, official-money standard PGA Tour event to determine the FedEx Cup champion.
Last season, the regular-season champion, Scheffler, won $10 million for topping the table after the Wyndham Championship from a $20 million pool paid out before the playoffs to the top 10 finishers in the regular-season points list. He, and the rest of the top 10, didn't get this year that some money that was doled out last year as part of the reconfigured FedEx Cup bonus money payout.
Scheffler also earned another $8 million from a separate $40 million bonus pool called the Comcast Business Tour Top 10, which similarly rewarded the top 10 finishers in the FedEx Cup standings at the end of the regular season. That bonus pool was also eliminated for this season, meaning Scheffler didn't haul in the same $18 million he got last year for dominating the PGA Tour season.
For this season, though, all of the 2026 FedEx Cup bonus pool money is paid after the BMW Championship, the second leg of the playoffs. The top 125 players in the FedEx Cup standings after that St. Louis event will earn bonus payouts, with the top-ranked player getting $23 million. (Obviously, the positions of players ranked 71st through 125th are locked after the Wyndham Championship.) Paying out that bonus pool money after the last event to earn FedEx Cup points frees the PGA Tour to contest the Tour Championship as a standalone bonanza where all 30 qualifying players start on even footing, at even par.
There are only two players who can stop Scheffler from winning that $23 million prize at the end of next week at Bellerive Country Club: Matt Fitzpatrick and Cameron Young, who is 962 points behind Scheffler and in third place in the FedEx Cup standings. Every other player that qualified for the playoffs is at least 1,501 points adrift of Scheffler, meaning they can't catch him even if they win both the FedEx St. Jude Championship and the BMW Championship.
For Fitzpatrick and Young, they would have to do something special to catch Scheffler, as the first two playoff events only each offer 750 FedEx Cup points to the champion, as compared to 2,000 points in recent memory. Volatility is hard to come by at the top of the FedEx Cup table this season.
Fitzpatrick has few paths to beat Scheffler. He could win this week or next to earn 750 points, and then he would need to finish inside the top 20 in Memphis or the top 17 in St. Louis to catch Scheffler, assuming Scheffler somehow finishes dead last in both events. Without a win, Fitzpatrick will have to finish second -- with the option to finish tied five ways for runner-up -- in at least one event. Depending on that runner-up finish and how many ties there are, he would have to finish the other event in at least solo fourth place.
Young's path to the top of the FedEx Cup standings is even rougher. Like Fitzpatrick, he could win this week or next, and then he would need to finish in solo sixth or better in Memphis and in the top 8 in St. Louis to reach Scheffler -- again, assuming Scheffler finishes last in both events. Otherwise, Young would have to finish solo second in both events.
That's asking a lot, even of two incredible players, meaning Scottie Scheffler is almost impossible to catch.
