Where Does Scottie Scheffler's 2024 Season Rank

Scottie Scheffler has had a truly remarkable year. His victory at the Hero World Challenge was his ninth of 2024 and has drawn comparisons with Tiger Woods in his prime.

You could be forgiven for believing that Scheffler is dominating the game in a way no other golfer has achieved in modern times - you would be wrong.

Woods won nine times in 2000 and Vijay Singh did the same thing four years later.

One of the most remarkable things about Singh’s streak relates to his age. He was 41.

On September 6, 2004, Singh won the Deutsche Bank Championship. With the win, he overtook Woods at the top of the world rankings, ending Woods' streak of 264 weeks at the top of the golf world.

Singh finished the 2004 season with a career-best nine victories, 18 top-10s, and a record $10,905,166 in earnings and was named Player of the Year.

Scheffler had one major success among his nine titles - The Masters. Singh’s wonderful 2004 included the US PGA.

But what Woods achieved in 2000 was on an entirely different level. 

He won The Open, the US Open and the US PGA. He also won six consecutive events. 

His performance in winning the US Open was jaw-dropping. He disappeared over the horizon, claiming the trophy by a staggering 15 shots. At the age of 24, he became the youngest golfer to achieve the Career Grand Slam. 

At the end of 2000, Woods had won nine of the 20 PGA Tour events he entered and had broken the record for the lowest scoring average in tour history. He was named the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year, the only athlete to be honoured twice, and was ranked by Golf Digest magazine as the 12th-best golfer of all time.

Paul Runyan also won nine times in 1933.

Have there been more successful individual seasons?

The answer is a resounding yes.

In 1948, Ben Hogan won 10 times - two years earlier he had picked up 13 titles. And in 1950, Sam Snead picked up 11 PGA Tour titles.

But all of these are nothing when compared with Byron Nelson in 1945. That was the year the American won EIGHTEEN times. 

It is not quite the achievement it sounds - most of his fellow competitors were serving in the military as the Second World War dragged on. Hogan missed half that year, while Lloyd Mangrum and Jimmy Demaret missed almost the entire season. 

But Nelson still had to get the job done. And he won a further six times in 1946. He also collected eight victories in 1944. It meant that in three seasons he won an incredible 32 tournaments. 

Of more significance were the 30 tournaments won by Hogan between 1946-48 because he was competing against full-strength fields.

For the record, Woods won 22 times between 1999-2001 and 21 times between 2005-07.

So as good as Scheffler’s run has been - and it has - he still has some way to go…

And what about Europe? Nobody comes close. 

Seve Ballesteros won six times in 1986 and five times in 1988. The other five-time winners are Nick Faldo in 1983, Colin Montgomerie in 1999 and Lee Westwood in 2000.