This time last year, Scottie Scheffler had never won a PGA Tour event, was outside the top 10 of the Official World Golf Rankings, not in Hawaii for the Tournament of Champions and had only earned $7.5 million. Now? He’s a four-time winner, the reigning Masters champion, has the second shortest odds of anyone to win the 2023 Tournament of Champions and has tripled his career earnings to just over $22M. Oh, and if he finishes near the top of this week’s event, he’ll return to No. 1 in the world for what would be his 31st week.

Needless to say, things have changed.

It begs the question, though, of who we’re overlooking right now. More specifically: Who is the Scottie Scheffler of 2023? The player who will be sitting here this time next year, perhaps not with the same bona fides Scheffler put together in 2022, but with a resume that’s far more complete than it is currently constituted and a name that is far more familiar in golf households than it is currently.

Perhaps there are several candidates to fill this role in 2023, but none are as blatantly obvious as the golfer who mostly fits the Scheffler statistical profile, nearly won multiple majors in 2022 and is coming off his first American team event just like Scheffler was a year ago.

The most likely candidate to replicate Scottie Scheffler’s 2022 in 2023 is, of course, Cam Young.

Young has yet to win on the PGA Tour, but he’s an elite ball-striker (13th over the last 12 months), and he’s in contention a lot. In 2022 alone he finished second or third in the following events.

• Open Championship
• Genesis Invitational
• Rocket Mortgage Classic
• Wells Fargo Championship
• PGA Championship
• RBC Heritage

This is easy to say now, but if, say, 10 strokes go differently, we’re talking about Cam Young having Scottie Scheffler’s 2022 in 2022 and not in 2023.

Young fits the modern mold, too. He’s mega long off the tee — statistician Joseph LaMagna has called him the best driver in the world — and good enough elsewhere to be extraordinarily dangerous. His finish dispersion is great, too, in that he doesn’t finish T11 very often. In 25 starts last season, he finished in the top three seven times and missed the cut seven times.

That’s a perfect ratio, and it has led Data Golf to the following conclusion, which it put forth in a recent newsletter.

Young is one of the best active players without a PGA Tour win: our models estimate that his PGA Tour performances have been good enough to expect 1.6 PGA Tour wins and 0.4 major wins. The only winless player with higher values in those two metrics is Tommy Fleetwood.

In other words, Cam Young is coming in 2023.

To drive home the point, consider that of the top 150 players in the world right now, Young is the 18th-best career ball-striker. The names ahead of him include Rory McIlroy, Sergio Garcia, Justin Thomas and Dustin Johnson. They are players who win a lot. Young has played so few rounds compared to the rest of those guys (for example: Young has played 87 measured ShotLink rounds compared to Xander Schauffele’s 405) that it’s easier to envision his win total catching up with everyone else than it is to envision him falling off the planet when it comes to his ball-striking numbers.

That’s not something rooted in statistical certainty — not that anything in golf truly is — but Young’s skillset doesn’t evaporate. Great short games, great putters, they come and go. The pop and then they disappear. Elite driving, being a top-five (perhaps top-three) driver in the world? That’s a sticky statistic.

Young seems to want the ball, too. He hit the lost shot of the year in 2022 when he made a two on the 72nd hole at St. Andrews during the Open Championship. It got sandwiched between Cam Smith’s victory and McIlroy’s defeat, but when he had to have a two, he stepped up and made it in a moment when he had to have it. He talked after that round about how he’s still learning to win at the highest level, and his Open success was part of that.

“I think I stuck to my plan and the process of what had gotten me there really well,” said Young. “And not necessarily that I didn’t at the PGA Championship, but I don’t know if I let it come to me as much as I did today. I tried as much as I could — watching [Cam Smith] make a million birdies in a row is in one sense good because it pushes you, and in another sense it’s hard to watch because you see him making putts, knowing that he’s kind of beating you.

“But, yeah, I think I was a little bit more patient today and I obviously was rewarded on 18, but just came up a little bit short.”

Coming up short was a theme for Young in 2022, which is not dissimilar to Scheffler’s 2021. Scheffler finished in the top eight seven times — including at three of the major championships — in 2021 without winning a single event. He had the highest expected win rate in 2021 (1.27 wins) of anyone who didn’t win a PGA Tour event. Young took that honor in 2022 at 1.20 (and 0.38 in majors, which is extremely high).

Add it all up, and Young is the obvious choice to have a Scheffler-like year in 2023. He’s not being talked about like he perhaps should be — this was true of Scheffler last year as well — but after he hits on one, two or even three big-time PGA Tour victories. All of that will change. Just like it did for the guy he’s now chasing.

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January does not mark the start of a new golf season, but it does represent the time and place where golf really begins in earnest for 2023. Most of the best players in the world will be on hand for the Tournament of Champions in Kapalua, Hawaii, and plenty of the next generation of stars and superstars will not be with them.

That’s because next year’s major winners and 2027’s Ryder Cuppers — at least some of them — were toiling on the Korn Ferry Tour last year with no chance of earning the win needed to get to Kapalua. Some of those golfers who earned their PGA Tour cards made their way to the big boy circuit in the fall, and some of them even played quite well.

There will always be intrigue surrounding the top players in the world — the Rory McIlroys, Jordan Spieths and Collin Morikawas. But sport is often built on hope for the future, too. While that’s not as rabid in golf as it is some other team sports, it’s still pertinent and matters for the future. So while we will give plenty of time and energy to the Tournament of Champions when it rolls around, today we’re going to look at a handful of players who were in the minor leagues last year but could have significant years on the PGA Tour starting after the TOC.

1. Justin Suh

I’ve written about Suh extensively, but I remain fascinated by him. He won the Korn Ferry Tour championship in September and was named Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year in November. If you’re looking for some pushback, his best PGA Tour start in seven fall events was a T29 at the CJ Cup, and he only gained strokes ball-striking in one of them (also the CJ Cup). Still, if you look at the list of past Korn Ferry Tour Players of the Year, you’re going to find some absolute studs.

• 2020-21: Stephan Jager
• 2019: Scottie Scheffler
• 2018: Sungjae Im
• 2017: Chesson Hadley
• 2016: Wesley Bryan
• 2015: Patton Kizzire
• 2014: Carlos Ortiz

That’s a lot of PGA Tour champions. The only question for me is whether Suh is going to be, say, Scheffler or Kizzire. One is a nice PGA Tour player who has won at that level before. The other is a major champion and a former No. 1 player in the world.

2. Taylor Montgomery

His run of play from the middle of April to the end of the season was ridiculous. Eight top 10s in 10 Korn Ferry stars fowllowed by six top 15s in seven PGA Tour stars in the fall. His game, at least statistically, doesn’t scream PGA Tour star, but overall Data Golf has him as the highest-rated player in the world (currently No. 28, ahead of Shane Lowry and Hideki Matsuyama and just behind Jordan Spieth) who also recently played on the KFT.

3. Nick Hardy

The former Illinois golfer finished T14 at the U.S. Open in June and had three top 25s on the PGA Tour in June. He has incrementally improved each of the last three years, and a fourth could put him as a top 50 or top 75 player in the world.

4. Carl Yuan

He finished second on the Korn Ferry Tour points list behind Suh. He doesn’t project as strongly as Suh (or, to me, even Hardy), but from a production standpoint, he’s impossible to ignore. In his last 25 Korn Ferry Tour starts, Yuan has a victory and five other top-five finishes.

5. Will Gordon

Gordon finished off his Korn Ferry Tour year with three top fives in his last five starts and finished second in Korn Ferry Tour Finals points behind Suh. He nearly won the 2020 Travelers Championship, and has had some success on the PGA Tour circuit. At 26, he’s certainly not the youngest guy on this list, but he’s quite long off the tee, hits the ball well and his Data Golf ranking (No. 84) suggests that his Official World Golf Ranking (No. 134) has some catching up to do.

6. Austin Eckroat

A fellow Oklahoma Stater, Eckroat thrived as the Korn Ferry Tour season played out. He finished fifth in Korn Ferry Tour Finals points, and Data Golf quietly has him as a top-200 player in the world. Similarly to his former teammate, Viktor Hovland, Eckroat can struggle with his short game but is a tremendous hitter of the golf ball, which — thankfully for him — is the skill the PGA Tour rewards the most.

7. Davis Thompson

You may remember Thompson as somebody who popped briefly at the 2020 U.S. Open when he was still an amateur at Georgia, but his professional career on the Korn Ferry Tour has been impressive. He finished 18th in points but won in June and then had some nice starts on the PGA Tour in the fall (two top 12s). The pedigree is immense, too.  Thompson was a two-time All-American at Georgia, is a former SEC Player of the Year and a former No. 1 player in the World Amateur Golf Rankings.

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You know the names by now: Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Adam Scott, Hideki Matsuyama. But what about those who have yet to make a name for themselves? In total, the 2022 Presidents Cup will feature 14 rookies with six coming for the United States side and eight being featured for the internationals.

While a pair of those Americans include Scottie Scheffler and Collin Morikawa, who were influential in the U.S. drubbing of the Europeans at the 2021 Ryder Cup, this week still marks their first experience in the Presidents Cup. Just one year ago, Scheffler was considered a borderline selection by captain Steve Stricker for Whistling Straits. The Wisconsin native’s pick proved to be a wise one as Scheffler played a key role in the competition by dethroning Jon Rahm in singles. He would later go on to become No. 1 in the OWGR, a position he still holds. 

Something similar may possibly be in store for either Davis Love III or Trevor Immelman and one of their team’s members this time around. Quail Hollow Club could prove to be a launching pad for some of the youngest stars in the game, or even a veteran, and the team environment will be conducive to big moments. 

In 2019, Abraham Ancer and Sungjae Im proved to be up to the task for the international side. Each gathered 3.5 points at Royal Melbourne and nearly led the international team to a dramatic upset victory over the Tiger Woods-led Americans. Facing heavy odds once again, the internationals will need more than a pair of their fresh faces to step up if they are expected to pull off the unthinkable.

Odds for top points scorer are courtesy of Caesars Sportsbooks

Potential unlikely heroes for United States

Tony Finau (12-1 to be top points scorer): He may be one of the oldest members of the team, and has plenty of experience having played in three prior team events, but Finau has yet been treated as an elite player. Winning twice in the late summer, the world No. 14 almost added another at the St. Jude Championship, which would have upped his career win total to five in a blink of an eye. 

He impressed in his Ryder Cup debut in 2018 at Le National, where even though the U.S. was outmatched, Finau garnered a record of 2-1-0 which included a 6&4 beatdown of Tommy Fleetwood on Sunday. Influential in Royal Melbourne and Wisconsin, the 33-year-old will serve as a key cog in Charlotte with Quail Hollow is statistically being right up his alley.

Sam Burns (12-1): A three-time winner during the 2021-22 season, Burns has fared well in team competitions before. Alongside Billy Horschel, the SEC duo finished runner-up at the Zurich Classic to U.S. teammates Xander Schauffele and Patrick Cantlay. Despite this being his first Presidents Cup, Burns hardly feels like a rookie.

Likely to be paired with Horschel, the two will be a difficult out as they can run as hot as anyone on the greens. If not paired with Horschel, his good friend Scheffler may be an ideal partner as the laidback, easygoing nature of each is ideal for the high-pressure, chaotic environment which will engulf Quail Hollow.

Cameron Young (18-1): Of all Presidents Cup players, Young is second only to Scheffler over the last three months in strokes gained off the tee. The presumed Rookie of the Year is familiar with finishing one spot short as he captured seven podium finishes throughout his 2021-22 campaign, including the PGA Championship and The Open.

Young is an ideal fit for Quail Hollow, and his ability to rise to the occasion should serve him well. He seems to play with the ultimate chip on his shoulder, and if able to channel this quiet assassin mentality into the team setting, this could be just the beginning of a fruitful Presidents Cup career.

Potential unlikely heroes for internationals

Corey Conners (28-1): The internationals are in a hole before a tee has even been pegged into the ground. They must rely on some of their known quantities without the depth of the U.S. team, one of which is Conners. The Canadian may technically be a rookie, but his ball-striking has the potential to give the Americans headaches.

Second in driving accuracy and sixth in strokes gained approach over the last three months, Conners is one of the few players who is on par with the Americans in this department. He often struggles on and around the green, but we have seen poor putters such as Sergio Garcia thrive in this arena. Perhaps the same will go for Conners.

Taylor Pendrith (55-1): The second of the Canadians for captain Immelman, Pendrith could be a star in the making. Returning from injury in the midsummer, Pendrith notched six top-15 finishes in his last eight tournaments, including a runner-up performance to Finau at the Rocket Mortgage Classic.

Pendrith is supremely long off the tee — third in this field — and possesses the firepower to dismantle the American side. Similar to Conners, the putter can pose problems, but if strategically teamed with Tom Kim or Christiaan Bezuidenhout, those concerns can be squashed.

K.H. Lee (70-1): The sexiest golfer in the world has quickly become one of the best golfers in the world. Successfully defending his Byron Nelson title this past season, Lee looked Americans Spieth, Thomas and Schauffele — and even his own teammate Matsuyama — in the eyes en route to his second PGA Tour victory.

The moment is never too big for Lee; that was on display in the FedEx Cup Playoffs when he clawed his way into the Tour Championship via a T5 finish at the BMW Championship. He ranks sixth in strokes gained putting, and while the results haven’t been memorable at Quail Hollow, he has posted some strong rounds, including a 5-under 66 to kick off the 2021 Wells Fargo Championship.

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