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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Can the toast of the fall become the major championship (or elevated event) debutante of the spring? That’s the question when it comes to Tom Kim, winner of two post-Open Championship events on the PGA Tour and individual champion (if there was one) of the Presidents Cup in September.

Kim has captivated pretty much everyone who encountered him with not only his buttery approach shots and deft short game, but an electricity that is rare in the golf world. His aura, it seems, is nearly as singular and nonreplicable as his game. 

He is, without question, the best youngest star in golf. The 20-year-old (he won’t be 21 until the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club) is ranked No. 15 in the world and on the radar of even the very best players in the world.

Kim is a bit of an oddity, too. In a world where many of the top young players are making their way with distance and speed, Kim is not that long off the tee. Last year, he didn’t have enough rounds to qualify, but his average drive of 301.1 yards would have been T92 on the PGA Tour, and his club head speed of 110.09 would have ranked 177th. This is not the statistical profile of somebody ranked in the top 20 in the world six months removed from his teenage years.

And yet, the thing Kim does best is perhaps the lost art of winning. He wins a lot. In 81 starts in Official World Golf Ranking events, Kim has eight wins. That’s an enormous number that, while buoyed a bit by playing often on lesser tours, cannot be immediately dismissed because Kim has also won twice in 20 starts on the PGA Tour.

In other words, his winning percentage on the best tour in the world (10%) is actually slightly better than his winning percentage on every other tour in the world (9.8%).

I recently joked that Tom Kim is going to be the richest golfer who has ever lived, which is fun to think about until you realize it actually might not be a joke. The PGA Tour floated a document earlier this year that showed how Jim Furyk (17 wins, one major) would have made more than $600 million in earnings — if his career had started in 2023 — from a variety of different PGA Tour revenue streams.

I’m not saying Kim is going to have Furyk’s career, but if he does, he’s probably going down as the richest golfer of all time (on-course earnings only, of course).

All of this begs the obvious question of just how good Kim can be: What is Tom Kim’s ceiling?

Some incredible comps from Data Golf gets things started: Adam Scott in 2001, Jon Rahm in 2015, Joaquin Niemann in 2019, Sungjae Im in 2018, Jason Day in 2008, and Rickie Fowler in 2009. It also throws in Kevin Na in 2004 and Ryo Ishikawa in 2012.

Though I’m enamored with Kim’s presence and his sense of the moment, I tend to believe he’s a bit overvalued right now. He exceeded his expected win total during the 2021-22 season (two worldwide wins, 0.79 expected wins), and he is doing so again in the 2022-23 season (one win, 0.55 expected wins). This is not everything, but if you dig a little deeper into his profile, it tells a story.

Kim’s problem is going to be ball-striking. He’s an elite iron player — like, really great — but he’s so short off the tee that it’s likely going to prohibit him from truly contending at the biggest events. While Kim is incredibly consistent off the tee — his driving accuracy would have ranked fourth last season if he’d qualified — he has trouble gaining strokes on the field because of his length.

This could change. We saw Matt Fitzpatrick transform his distance through speed training and win a U.S. Open because of it. As Kim is currently constituted, though, he is going to have to have extraordinary putting weeks to win golf tournaments. (He did, for the record, at both the Wyndham Championship and the Shriners in his two victories.) Of the top 150 players in the world who have won at least twice in 2022, Kim is by far the shortest player of that group, according to Data Golf.

Is that sustainable? It might be. A good present-day comp for Kim might be Cam Smith, who is extremely average off the tee and actually gained fewer strokes with his driver than Kim did over the last 12 months (mostly because he’s not as accurate).

If you pull the numbers back to the top 150 players ever over the last 10 years, we get an even better picture. Here are the names that look like Kim: Jim Furyk, Luke Donald, Zach Johnson, Graeme McDowell and Brandt Snedeker with maybe a bit of Jordan Spieth.

This group (outside of Spieth) is a great aim for somebody like Kim. I don’t know if he’s going to have the careers that any of them have had, but he certainly could absolutely have Matt Kuchar’s career. He could have Zach Johnson’s career. Can he go beyond that? Unless things change dramatically — and they might given that he’s 20! — that seems unlikely.  

On paper, he may look like Justin Thomas or Rory McIlroy — generational players. But, and not to bum you out because I actually love him, Tom Kim is likely not a generational player.

This has multiple implications for 2023. As the No. 15 player in the world, Kim is probably a bit overvalued. The second, which is related to the first, is that we should consider our expectations of him. Because he won when he did, and because he crushed at the Presidents Cup, some folks are going into this season believing that Kim can (or even will) win three times. However, with the elevated events schedule he’s almost certainly going to play, that’s unlikely.

Kim’s story should be (and is) celebrated. However, will have a much better picture after this season full of expectations and only the big-boy events of just what Tom Kim can be on the PGA Tour.

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Collin Morikawa was unsuccessful in picking up a victory at the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba. He was barely in contention, but when the dust settled on one of the last PGA Tour events of the year, Morikawa still found himself at the center of the story.

Earlier in the week, Golf Channel commentator Trevor Immelman had posited that perhaps the reason Morikawa has been struggling in 2022 — a year during which he has failed to secure a win — was because of how difficult it is to live up to the high bar he set for himself early in his career when he won five of his first 50 PGA Tour events and two of his first eight major championships.

Morikawa’s reaction to the very innocuous comment from Immelman was strange, and made me think he had completely misunderstood what Immelman had said.

“Wow, that’s hard to hear from him,” Morikawa told Golf Channel. “I couldn’t care less what he says there because I don’t think that’s my bar. I think I’ve got so much more to improve. I’ve been near last on putting. I don’t think I’ve even finished close to being average on putting. If I can just get my putting to be average, I think there’s so much more to improve. I don’t know where that came from, but that kind of stings there. I don’t like to hear that.

“I don’t know if that was a compliment, I’ll be honest. If he did, maybe it came off wrong from what I heard. For me, I’ve never seen a ceiling. I just want to keep improving. Obviously, we took a couple steps back this year. It’s just trying to get better every day and trying to improve on little things. I expect myself to play well. I set really high goals for myself. It just sucks when they don’t come through.”

Immelman later confirmed that the entire thing was in fact a misunderstanding, but between Morikawa’s reaction, his hiring of a putting coach and his early-week monologue about the plight of getting old (Morikawa turns 26 next February), it made me wonder what else was going on with the two-time major champion.

“It was a lot more stressful this year,” Morikawa said of his 2022. “I’ve just been kind of trying to figure out what was wrong when it was simply just kind of a body thing and just the way my body was moving. Unfortunately, it took seven, eight months throughout the year to at least find that, but that’s on me. Everything is on me just to know what’s going on. I’ve got a great team around me, but that’s the best thing is that, you know, I still have to be aware of what I’m doing.

“I just wasn’t kind of being able to make sure everything was where I wanted it to be. It’s a grind, but that’s what’s great. Even though we are kind of heading towards this offseason, this fall area, I’m putting a lot of pieces together and putting a lot of work in to make sure this kind of next 2023 is going to be [the] best ever.”

To be clear, Morikawa was talking about the way his body functioned in 2022.

“I think it’s just getting old,” said the 25-year-old. “Yeah, no, it’s just getting old. I mean, man, I drank way more in college than I ever do now, but apparently when you get older, your body just moves differently. I still feel great, like everything feels great, everything moves great, but it’s just not as clean as it was. And the maintenance I have to do now is just a little bit more. It doesn’t mean I need to do anything crazy, I’m not changing anything really, it’s just getting my body to where I need it to be.

“Last year, I didn’t really have to focus on it, but when I look back and you think about how much travel I’ve done over the past three and a half years, it’s a lot. It doesn’t stop. I love it, but travel takes a toll on your body and it takes a toll on you and you’ve got to be able to kind of work your way through that and that’s what the best athletes are doing.”

It’s clear that there is frustration from Morikawa that he has been unable to back up his spectacular 2020 and 2021 campaigns with something similar in 2022, and he sort of proved Immelman’s point — and to be fair, the same point many pundits and even players have made over the years — that when you don’t achieve what you once achieved at such a young age, it can wear on you mentally, physically and emotionally.

As for the golf itself, not a ton changed statistically, which should be encouraging to Morikawa. He dropped slightly in ball striking from 2021 (1.62 to 1.47 strokes gained per round) but not nearly enough to be worrisome. He was actually a better putter in 2022 than he was in 2021, although his short game suffered the biggest categorical drop compared to any other part of his game.

One interesting nuance is that while Morikawa’s very best performances and very worst performances were nearly identical to what he did in 2021 (his expected wins did drop from 1.97 to 0.94 from 2021 to 2022), his median performances in 2022 were far worse than they were in 2021. This, theoretically, shouldn’t matter as it relates to winning (you only win with your best performances anyway), but it might matter in regards to how he feels like he is playing.

The point here is that Morikawa is going to be fine. He’s a high-variance player, which if you’re intent on collecting a lot of trophies is what you want to be. It would serve him well mentally and emotionally to understand that just because a few tournaments went his way early in his career, that doesn’t mean his baseline is somebody who wins three or four regular events and a major every year. Data Golf had him at 0.20 expected majors in 2020, and he won one; it had him at 0.45 expected majors in 2021, and he won another. This matters because, while he was good, he was not overwhelmingly great in 2020-2021 yet the expectations after winning two majors started to pile up. We wouldn’t even be having this conversation if Morikawa was a three-win, no-major guy.

If you take the long view, wins and losses often happen randomly, which means they can sometimes happen in bunches. Just because you win two of your first eight majors doesn’t mean you’re the second coming of Tiger Woods. Just because you don’t win any of your next 15 doesn’t mean the Korn Ferry Tour is in your future.

Morikawa exceeded both expectations and statistical probabilities in terms of winning over the first few years of his career. He overachieved. That happens, but it doesn’t mean a winless year has changed him as a player or a competitor even if it can often feel that way. 

Are there things to work on? Sure. Can the iron play get a tad better? Yes. Does he need to clean up his short game a bit? Absolutely. But if Morikawa continues to play like he did in 2022, he’s going to have more seasons (in terms of wins) like he experienced in 2021. That can seem counterintuitive, but as we’ve seen so many times throughout the history of golf, this game makes absolutely no sense. If you let it, the sport can befuddle even those who have seemingly every answer.

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Cameron Young was named the 2021-22 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year on Wednesday as the 25-year-old earned a whopping 94% of the vote from other players. Young’s award follows an impressive debut that featured seven top-five finishes, including a pair of near-victories at two majors, as well as strong efforts at the Genesis Invitational and Wells Fargo Championship.

“It’s very special,” said Young Wednesday at the CJ Cup in South Carolina. “I know the namesake Arnold Palmer obviously was a giant in the game of golf, and we have him to thank for a lot of what we do today, what the PGA Tour is. To be related to that in some small way is very cool. I know we had a very strong rookie class and I know it’s voted by my peers, so it’s a huge honor to be thought of in that way, just to kind of finish the year that way.”

Young’s best stuff often came at the biggest events. He finished runner-up to Cam Smith at the Open Championship in July and T3 at the PGA Championship in May, narrowly missing out on a playoff alongside Justin Thomas and Will Zalatoris. Throw in big-time performances at a handful of other PGA Tour stops, a 19th-place finish in the FedEx Cup and $6.5 million earned in his first full year on Tour, and it’s clear there was no other choice.

“Congratulations to Cameron Young on being voted PGA Tour Rookie of the Year by his peers,” said PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan in a statement. “Cameron’s career has seen a remarkable rise over the last several years, and he quickly became a favorite among fans last season with the style in which he attacks the golf course. And, of course, given Cameron’s Wake Forest ties, receiving the Arnold Palmer Award as PGA Tour Rookie of the Year will certainly hold a special significance for him.”

The CJ Cup marks Young’s second event of the 2022-23 PGA Tour season, and he’ll play alongside several other stars, including 2021-22 PGA Tour Player of the Year, Scottie Scheffler. Young, who was part of the 2022 United States Presidents Cup team, finished T53 at last week’s Zozo Championship to start his 2022-23 PGA Tour season. 

Despite all of Young’s success last season, however, he still came up short of what he coveted most: a Tour victory. 

“Obviously had my fair share of chances, and I would hope one of them’s coming at some point,” said Young. “Yeah, it would be great just to finish out the year on a high note. And anytime you win out here — well, I don’t know, but supposedly it’s very special. Yeah, it would be a great place to do it, for sure.”

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Slowly but surely, odds makers at Caesars Sportsbook have swung the betting line ever more in favor of the United States team as action prepares to get underway at the 2022 Presidents Cup. Featuring 12 players who find themselves inside the top 25 of the Official World Golf Rankings, the Americans have a substantial advantage on paper in terms of experience and skill.

That talent disparity is reflected in the betting odds at Quail Hollow as the U.S. is listed as heavy favorites to successfully defend the Presidents Cup. However, it wasn’t always this skewed.

Opening months ago as 1/3 favorites, the U.S. was given an implied probability of 75% to raise the Presidents Cup for the 12th time in only 14 editions of this team event. With news reverberating throughout the golf world of players making the jump to LIV Golf — and thus forgoing their opportunity to play in the Presidents Cup — odds began to move in the direction of the home team.

2022 Presidents Cup odds

To win

• United States team: 2/15
• International team: 7-1
• Tie: 18-1

Louis Oosthuizen was the first international stalwart to make the switch in tours, yet lines remained steady throughout June. The South African was thought to be one of the leaders for his captain and fellow countryman Trevor Immelman. Instead, with his departure and the subsequent opening of the floodgates to LIV, the United States has since become even heavier favorites.

Along with Oosthuizen, Abraham Ancer, Cameron Smith and Joaquin Niemann were all in line to participate for the international side. Each inside the qualifying criteria at the time of their leave, the loss of these top players has been felt by Immelman’s squad. 

Avid bettors took notice of the rumors circulating about the Champion Golfer of the Year and Niemann potentially exiting the PGA Tour, and they were afforded a much more favorable price on the U.S. side in September. While never sexy to lay $500 to profit $100, the imminent news of these big names to LIV Golf made the juice worth the squeeze for those who indulged.

Top points scorer

• Scottie Scheffler: 15/2
• Xander Schauffele: 15/2
• Patrick Cantlay: 8-1
• Justin Thomas: 17/2
• Max Homa: 9-1
• Collin Morikawa: 10-1
• Sam Burns: 12-1
• Tony Finau: 12-1
• Jordan Spieth: 14-1
• Cameron Young: 18-1

The first 10 names on this list are all American. Perhaps the most surprising is Homa at 9-1 as it will be his Presidents Cup debut, and yet, he checks in five points shorter than Spieth, who is the most experienced member of the U.S. The name of the game in top points scoring is playing in all five sessions and one would expect Spieth to be paired with his good friend Thomas for the majority of them.

• Sungjae Im: 18-1
• Hideki Matsuyama: 18-1
• Tom Kim: 20-1
• Adam Scott: 25-1
• Corey Conners: 28-1

The five men listed above likely will play in each session for the international team. Without the depth of its U.S. counterpart, the international team’s path to victory is extremely narrow and reliant on its top players. This does allow for an interesting angle into the top points scoring market as Im has been one of the best players in the world over the last few months and Matsuyama has previously thrived at Quail Hollow — they’re my two favorite picks.

• Billy Horschel: 35-1
• Si Woo Kim: 35-1
• Cam Davis: 40-1
• Kevin Kisner: 50-1
• Taylor Pendrith: 55-1
• Christiaan Bezuidenhout: 60-1
• K.H. Lee: 70-1
• Sebastian Munoz: 70-1
• Mito Pereira: 70-1

Like picking names out of a hat, one needs to decipher who will be the 2022 version of Ancer and Im in 2019, both of whom captured 3.5 points and were top points scorers alongside Thomas. If I had to take a stab, Lee would be my guess as a relatively under the radar name who could play in four sessions. The South Korean was brilliant in the FedEx Cup Playoffs and can make birdies in bunches.

Prop bets

• Day 1 Winner — United States: 4/9 | International: 11/4 | Tie: 25/4
• Day 2 Winner — United States: 4/9 | International: 11/4 | Tie: 25/4
• Lead After Day 2 — United States: 1/3 | International: 7/2 | Tie: 7-1
• Day 3 Winner — United States: 2/5 | International: 29/10 | Tie: 27/4
• Day 4 Singles Winner — United States: 20/67 | International: 15/4 | Tie: 15/2

If keen on the United States’ chances, this is another avenue to explore with prices that are easier to stomach. However, the international side to win Day 1 is intriguing as the U.S. has historically struggled in foursomes (alternate shot), which is the Thursday format. Lineup cards will be announced Wednesday evening, and this line will move one way or another depending on the matchups presented.

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Hampshire’s Liz Young fired a final round of 69 at the VP Bank Swiss Ladies Open to secure her first victory on the Ladies European Tour at the age of 39.

The second round at Golfpark Holzhäusern was completed early on Saturday morning with Brockenhurst player holding a one-shot lead heading into the final round.

Despite a bogey on the first, Young, who is in the middle of her 14th season on tour, bounced back with birdies on the third and seventh holes to put her firmly in contention before she got a stroke of luck on the 10th to save par. Two further birdies on 11 and 14 gave her a two-shot lead with four holes to play and a par on the last was enough for her to seal victory.

“I can’t believe it right now! I’ve been out here a while and haven’t had the win yet, so to do it here in Switzerland is just fantastic,” she said. “On the 10th, I hit a good drive off the tee, and it just ran through the fairway into the rough so I couldn’t lift, clean and place and there was a big chunk of mud on the ball. I thought I had got to go for it, it was only a hybrid in my hand and unfortunately the mud curved it millimetres from out of bounds, so I salvaged the par from that and then hit a nice shot on 11 to get the birdie there instead. I tried to keep in the moment, I didn’t look at scoreboards until the 18th because I wanted to keep in the moment and play every shot as best as I can, and we would see what happen.”

Young had enjoyed a solid 2022 before this week, with two top-10s and two further top-15 finishes, and she knew her game was trending in the right direction. “I did feel it coming, I knew my game was good,” she continued. “In Sotogrande I didn’t play well, and I was burnt out, I took two weeks off which I needed and got my game back in shape. I knew my game was coming together and I was getting better and better – that’s why I’m still out here!”

She added: “I said I’d keep playing as long as I enjoy it, and as long as I keep getting better – 14 years later we’re here. I hope my daughter is watching. I have been out here a while and never really been close to a win, but I’ve had some good results in strong field events. To finally get across the line is amazing.”

Four-time LET winner Linn Grant finished in second place after a final round 69. The Swedish star started with birdies on three and five, but then dropped shots on eight and 14 to put her back to level-par for the day. However, the 23-year-old rallied towards the end of her round with three consecutive birdies on 15, 16 and 17, but was unable to find another on the last and finished with a total of 11-under-par.

Londoner Rosie Davies took third place – her best-ever result on the LET – after a final round of 70, while there was a three-way tie for fourth between Ursula Wikstrom, Alexandra Försterling and Manon De Roey. Surrey’s Annabel Dimmock recorded her best result of the season with T7 alongside Amandeep Drall and Charlotte Liautier, while Emma Spitz rounded out the top 10 on seven-under.

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