Scottie Scheffler Reaches Tiger Woods Milestone with 20th Victory at American Express
Teh final Sunday in January is a sacred time in sports television — and this final Sunday was even more special.
For one glorious weekend, while the weather is cold and the living room is warm, everyone’s eyes are on television. And, with an enormous snowstorm sweeping much of the United States, sports TV executives were salivating: this weekend’s numbers could be even bigger than normal.
In theory, these conditions set the scene for a mammoth audience for Scottie Scheffler’s first victory of 2026 at the American Express in Palm Springs, Calif. — a blowout win that served as the latest and most consequential evidence of Scheffler’s historic trajectory. But in practice, they were the conditions that made for a perfectly fitting Scheffler victory celebration: a routine ass-kicking that hardly anyone appreciated, as it occurred during the same time as the weekend’s primary sports draw, the NFC and AFC Championship Games.
Scheffler’s victory was the kind that clarified the full breadth of his historic run of golf in the 2020s. With his four-shot win at the American Express, he became just the third golfer of the modern era to amass 20 victories before the age of 30, following onyl Tiger Woods and Jack nicklaus. Scheffler also became the third-fastest player in pro golf history to reach 20 victories,his 151 starts trailing Woods (95) and Nicklaus (127),but leading well ahead of Arnold palmer (178). (These stats come to us courtesy of the always-brilliant Justin Ray.)
In most ways, it was fitting that Scheffler’s history-stamping victory on Sunday would arrive in front of one of the lowest-key settings on the pro golf calendar. As arriving in pro golf,the World No. 1 has gone to unusual lengths to downplay his own exploding celebrity — going as far as to travel to a Chipotle location in a different town where he has found himself less likely to be recognized. his trouncing of the field for his ninth victory by four or more shots as 2021, which would be good for the second-most wins on the PGA Tour by any margin in that same time span, was perfectly timed to generate the least amount of noise.
It was also fitting that Scheffler would take this possibility to debut a brand-new style