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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Rory McIlroy became the No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Rankings for the ninth time in his career in 2022, yet many still considered his year a failure because he did not win one of the four major championships in which he played. McIlroy could have won 15 tournaments, but without moving his major total from four to five, his campaign would have been deemed a disappointment to some. 

Is this fair? I’m not here to debate that. That’s a different topic for a different article for a different day. What I want to discuss is whether this merry-go-round for McIlroy of playing great golf but coming up short in the four events that matter most will ever end.

Will Rory McIlroy, once thought to be a future seven- or eight- (or 10-time?) major winner get back on the proper side of the ledger at one of the four majors in 2023 or at any point beyond that?

Here are two things that are surprising about McIlroy’s career: 1) He hasn’t had that many great chances at major championships (we’ll discuss this in more depth in a moment), and 2) Nearly a decade and a half into his career, he says he feels like he’s searching once again for his first major win.

“My last major championship was before [wife] Erica and I started going out; it was before my ankle injury and my back injury; it was before so many things that are now a part of my life,” McIlroy told Paul Kimmage of the Independent this fall. “I’m almost a different person. And I’ve been reflecting on this for the last couple of months and I think that’s a good thing. I feel like I’m trying to win my first major again, and there’s an enthusiasm and a fire about the chase again.”

This undoubtedly is true. McIlroy is extrinsically motivated, and while an external goal as big as this might be an albatross for some, for McIlroy it lights a flame. The carrot in front of him, it seems, is clearer than it’s been in several years. There is a world in which, perhaps, McIlroy wins multiple batches of major championships.

What’s also true, at least statistically, is that McIlroy is playing the best golf of his entire career. His last 50 rounds have represented, in terms of strokes gained, his best 50-round stretch of all time, including the periods of time in which he won his first four majors.

This leads us back to the first point, which is that McIlroy hasn’t had as many amazing performances at majors as you might have expected. As an aside, he has not had that many close calls, either, and those are categorically different than amazing performances. Before 2022, McIlroy had had a 25% chance to win a major going into the final round just five times in his career. He converted four of those.

In terms of great performances at majors, McIlroy had gained between 4-5 strokes — which is a lot but not an absurd amount — on major fields four times prior to 2022. He won all four majors. Statistically speaking, things had mostly gone his way at the majors when he played good golf (remember, Phil Mickelson once gained 6.6 strokes on a major field and lost). If his four major wins were 50-50 balls, McIlroy had come down with all of them.

This year’s second at the Masters and third at The Open were the two best performances McIlroy has ever had without converting them into wins (4.22 and 3.98 SG respectively).

To go deeper on this, we turn to Data Golf’s expected majors statistic, which shows how many majors you were expected to win based on your major performance in a given year. For example: If you gain 4.5 strokes per round on the field at a major, you are expected to win that major 50% of the time, so your expected major wins number would be 0.5. Add those up based on major performance in a given year, and you get an expected major wins total for that year.

Let’s take a look at McIlroy’s.

This is fascinating. For the first time in his career, McIlroy played well enough to potentially win a major or more and did not do so. Contrast his expected outcome this year with 2022 PGA Champion winner Justin Thomas’, which was 0.11.

In other words, 2022 was the first year of McIlroy’s career in which he’s had an expected win total of greater than 0.1 at the majors and not won one of them. It was — both statistically and anecdotally — the most heartbreaking year of his career when it comes to major championships.

If a great player produces enough expected wins over time, it is, well, expected that he’s going to eventually win. And if you want a glass-half-full view of McIlroy’s year, it comes from his caddie, Harry Diamond. McIlroy said in the Kimmage interview that Diamond is the person who has reminded him of the fact that he’s going to win majors if he continues to play at the clip.

“And it’s obviously a tough loss for him too but he can see the good in it: ‘Rory, you keep doing this and you’re gonna win your majors.’ That was it,” said McIlroy. “‘We’re gonna do this.’ And it was probably something I needed to hear because you can get sucked into that spiral of, ‘It’s been so long … I’ve just had a great opportunity … Am I ever going to do this?'”

Whether McIlroy continues to play at this current clip remains to be seen. But what is nearly definitive is the following: If he does, then he’ll win a fifth major and perhaps more after that. Of the 19 players to put up an expected major total of 0.5 or more in a single year since 2015, 14 of them won major championships. The odds are overwhelmingly in your favor.

Yes, you often still have to close out final rounds, which McIlroy failed to do at The Open in July, but if you’re posting a 0.5 expected major total a year, it’s also possible that one of those is going to be a major where everybody else fades away (think about J.T. at the PGA Championship) and you walk away with a fifth. As always in golf, you can only control what you can control. If McIlroy does next year what he did this year, there might not be a Scottie Scheffler who puts up 4.96 strokes gained per round at Augusta. Hell, there might not be a Cam Smith who posts 4.47 at The Open. Four could become six in an instant.

So while McIlroy’s major drought is about to hit nine years, his renewed desire has some numbers around it, and they’re pointing toward an optimistic 2023. Sure, the famine may never end, but Diamond is right, this kind of play — regardless of what anyone else does — almost certainly means that at some point it will.

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How many golfers have engendered more excitement about this upcoming year than Tony Finau? The list is not long, especially following Finau’s victory at the Houston Open over the weekend where he defeated Tyson Alexander by four to cash his third win in his last seven PGA Tour starts.

This is not the level success many envisioned Finau enjoying this year. Finau finished T19 at the small field Tournament of Champions in January but didn’t notch a single top 25 until the Mexico Open the first week in May where he finished T2. Since then, he’s been on the tear of his career, at least in terms of victories.

“Yeah, this is definitely the most all parts of my game have been clicking, but I would say I’ve played a lot of good golf for a while,” said Finau after his win in Houston. “I didn’t have a lot of wins to show for it, but I’ve pieced together a game, and that’s what you have to do out here. You know, with my experience, again as I alluded to, trying to be more of a precision player, because I don’t lack speed, so learning how to drive it in the fairway, working on my wedge game, working on my putter, those are all things that I worked extremely hard on.

“And I feel like I’ve been a very solid player for a long time, but it’s exciting for me that I’m getting better, and that’s all I can ask of myself is try and get better in the areas that I really need to. And then remember why you are where you are. I think I don’t go too far away from the DNA of my game, and how I see the game and I think I’m kind of bearing the fruits of how I see the game now and I’m able to hit the shots that I can see, which is pretty cool.”

Including that Mexico Open, Finau has seven top-five finishes in 15 starts, including three of his five career PGA Tour victories. It runs deeper than that; with an improved short game, Finau is one of just eight golfers who has been averaging over 2.0 strokes gained per round — top-five level in the world — since June 1, and he’s closer to No. 1 than he is to No. 8.

• Rory McIlroy: 3.0 SG/round
• Tony Finau: 2.6
• Patrick Cantlay: 2.4
• Xander Schauffele: 2.4
• Jon Rahm: 2.4
• Dustin Johnson: 2.3
• Will Zalatoris: 2.2
• Daniel Berger: 2.0

This is where the excitement comes in. McIlroy is obviously playing at a top-tier level, but Finau is not that far behind. Whether he can sustain that into a new year that begins with some monster tournaments and includes four majors in seven months remains to be seen, but it’s clear that Finau has kicked it into another gear.

“I’ve always felt like I’ve been very mentally strong,” said Finau on Sunday. “Sometimes I feel like once my game matches up to my mental attitude, I feel like I can be a great player. I feel like I’ve been a good player, showed some brilliance in spurts, but being consistent, to be consistently great takes a full game both mental and physical, and I feel like, honestly, my physical game is starting to match up to my mental. I’ve always been tough, I’ve always been strong mentally. Having a game that matches that is, I think, a great combination and I’m starting to see that with myself.”

Statistically, Finau is over-performing in all four major categories compared to his career averages. That is seemingly unsustainable, though none of them are that far beyond his baseline. Are we looking at a player making the leap into another category altogether, or simply a stretch of hot golf that will bolster the Wikipedia page?

There’s a difference, though, in winning 3M and Houston Opens and doing it at Riviera and the Memorial. Will this recent mini-jump be enough to push Finau over the top at some of the elevated events (or even majors) in 2023?

The answers to those questions will go a long way in determining whether the excitement surrounding the No. 12 player in the world going into 2023 is justified. Though Finau has thrived at major championships in the past (10 top 10s in 26 starts), he has yet to truly contend late on a Sunday. Even more perplexing is the fact that he’s never risen past the No. 9 spot in the Official World Golf Rankings — but that seems like it’s going to happen over the next year.

The First Cut podcast crew is back to bring you their recap of the Cadence Bank Houston Open. Follow & listen to The First Cut on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

If you made me list the players I’m most excited about watching and evaluating in 2023, McIlroy, Finau, Rahm, Jordan Spieth and (perhaps in an upset) Matthew Fitzpatrick are probably a personal top five. They all encapsulate the crossroads of intrigue, upside, talent and pieces of the unknown in ways most other players, at least at this juncture, do not.

Finau could go winless in 2023 or he could win two majors and become the PGA Tour Player of the Year. His long-term history and recent performance meld to create maybe the widest spectrum of outcomes of any player in the world right now.

One thing is for sure, though: Finau is playing with a refreshed belief — he said on Sunday that winning creates a confidence that is “contagious” — in himself and his game. His ceiling is high because his gifts are off the charts. He figured out how that can translate to wins in 2022. With that year and this history under his belt, what will he figure out in 2023 and beyond?

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