Scottie Scheffler enters the FedEx Cup Playoffs as the best golfer on the planet, yet his 2026 season feels cursed. He leads in nearly every statistical category, but the trophies have not followed as expected.
A Sunday at the 3M Open pushed Scheffler into a club nobody wants to join. He shares a record for runner-up finishes that has stood since the PGA Tour began tracking the statistic in 1983.
Golf fans are used to watching Scheffler celebrate trophies, not runner-up finishes piling up. This season tells a stranger story, full of near misses, tough losses, and a young challenger who refused to fold.
A strange season full of near misses
Scheffler has made seventeen PGA Tour starts in 2026, and the results look almost contradictory. He owns just one victory this year, a number that seems low given how consistently he has played all season.
Despite the modest win total, Scheffler has posted eleven top-five finishes already this season. That kind of consistency would translate into a handful of trophies, yet the closing putts have not gone his way.
He leads the entire PGA Tour in scoring average, and he sits inside the top ten in nearly every major statistical category tracked by the tour. Scheffler looks like the most dominant player in golf.
Records once held by golf legends
Five runner-up finishes in one season sound like an unusual number, but a handful of players have reached that total. Since the PGA Tour started keeping records in 1983, the club has stayed small.
Ernie Els reached five runner-up finishes in 2000 during one of his strongest seasons. Vijay Singh matched that mark in 2003, proving even legendary champions struggle to close out tournaments they should have won.
Cameron Young joined that group during his standout rookie season in 2022. Scheffler now becomes only the 4th player in more than four decades of recorded PGA Tour history to reach this rare, unwanted milestone.
The painful loss at the 3M Open
The 5th runner-up finish came at the 3M Open, played at TPC Twin Cities in Minnesota. Scheffler entered the weekend with momentum, and his play over the two rounds suggested a victory was close.
He carded back-to-back rounds of 64 and 63 over the weekend, numbers that would win most tournaments outright. Scheffler applied pressure on the leaderboard, forcing every other contender to match his scoring pace.
Unfortunately for Scheffler, one golfer refused to fold under that pressure. A bogey-free final round from his opponent proved just enough to secure the win, leaving Scheffler with yet another painful second-place finish.
Meet Jackson Koivun, the rising star
Jackson Koivun was the man who denied Scheffler yet another trophy at the 3M Open. This victory came in his third start as a professional golfer, a fast rise for someone new to the tour.
Koivun closed with a bogey-free round of 66, a performance that showed poise under pressure. Winning by three strokes over the best player in the world instantly turned him into golf’s newest breakout name.
Very few players in modern PGA Tour history have beaten a world number one this soon into their professional career. Koivun’s breakthrough win adds an unexpected twist to Scheffler’s otherwise dominant 2026 season.
Chasing an unwanted record this summer
Scheffler is now just one runner-up finish away from standing alone atop this unwanted record. A sixth-place result during the FedEx Cup Playoffs would make him the sole owner of the mark.
No player since 1983 has recorded 6 runner-up finishes within a single season. That distinction would place Scheffler in territory nobody else on this list, including Ernie Els or Vijay Singh, has ever reached.
It creates a very strange kind of pressure heading into the playoffs. Scheffler wants trophies, not history, for finishing second; yet another close call could hand him a record unlike any he has chased before.
Little-known fact: While many elite golfers change coaches throughout their careers, Scheffler has remained loyal to renowned instructor Randy Smith since childhood.
A historic consistency streak continues building
Beyond the runner-up record, Scheffler has quietly built another remarkable streak this year. Earlier in the season, he extended his run of consecutive top-25 finishes to 35 tournaments, the second-longest such run in the sport’s modern recorded era.
That streak came to an end in July when Scheffler missed the cut at the Scottish Open, which also snapped his run of consecutive cuts made.
Only Tiger Woods, who once strung together 38 consecutive top-25 finishes, has ever put together a longer run, and Scheffler’s pursuit of that number, even after the reset, shows just how steady his game has remained during a season defined by missed opportunities.
Comparing Scheffler to Tiger Woods again
Comparisons to Tiger Woods keep following Scheffler, and for good reason, given his recent accomplishments. During the 2025 season, Scheffler led the entire PGA Tour in scoring average across every single round, first through fourth.
The last golfer to accomplish that feat was Tiger Woods in 2000. That season remains one of the most dominant stretches in golf history, featuring three major championship victories by huge margins.
Scheffler closed out 2025 with six wins from 20 tournaments, including victories at the Open Championship and the PGA Championship. Reaching that level again in 2026 has proven difficult, despite his continued overall statistical dominance.
Little-known fact: Scheffler missed the start of the 2025 season after cutting his hand on broken glass while preparing homemade ravioli with his family on Christmas Day.
What comes next for Scheffler
The FedEx Cup Playoffs offer Scheffler a chance to rewrite the ending of this unusual season. Strong performances there could finally deliver the trophies his consistent play has deserved throughout nearly the entire 2026 campaign.
A couple of playoff wins would change how fans remember this year. Instead of discussing an unwanted runner-up record, the conversation would shift toward another dominant championship stretch from the world’s top-ranked golfer.
Whatever happens next, Scheffler has already reminded everyone why he remains the standard in professional golf. Records tied to bad luck rarely define a legacy, and his overall body of work speaks for itself entirely.
TL;DR
- Scheffler tied a rare mark of five runner-up finishes in a season, a feat last matched by Cameron Young in 2022.
- He lost the 3M Open to Jackson Koivun, who won in only his third start as a pro.
- Only Ernie Els and Vijay Singh had previously reached five runner-up finishes since 1983.
- Scheffler leads the PGA Tour in scoring average and sits in the top ten in nearly every major stat category.
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This article was made with AI assistance and human editing.
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