With only two tournaments left in the 2026 PGA Tour season, the debate regarding who the best player on the circuit has been this year has yet to be settled. The answer may depend on what one values the most — the number of wins, the quality of wins or the consistency throughout a long, tiresome season.
For world No. 2 and three-time PGA Tour Player of the Year, Rory McIlroy, the question has a simple answer. When asked about this topic ahead of the BMW Championship, McIlroy made sure to omit his name from the list of possibilities even if a Tour Championship victory came next week.
His answer instead was the same one that has been correct the last four years, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.
“No. I’m not the Player of the Year. No chance. Scottie [Scheffler] is,” McIlroy said with a laugh. “Well, sorry, there’s two weeks to go, but I firsthand watched him for the first two days last week, and he if he keeps playing like that…if he gains nine strokes on the greens every week, we’re all f’d.”
Scheffler does not have the most wins on the PGA Tour in 2026. That honor goes to Chris Gotterup with his victories at the Sony Open, WM Phoenix Open and John Deere Classic and Matt Fitzpatrick who claimed the Valspar Championship, the RBC Heritage in a playoff over Scheffler and the team-style Zurich Classic with his brother Alex.
Scheffler does not have the most meaningful victories, either. Cameron Young has The Players Championship and a signature event under his belt, while Wyndham Clark is the only major championship winner to have a say in this conversation thanks to his win at the U.S. Open to go along with his Byron Nelson title.
The world No. 1 does have the consistency factor, though, along with the same number of wins (2) as Young and Clark. In 18 tournaments thus far, Scheffler has 12 top-five finishes, five of which came in the form of a runner-up. He has missed just one cut which doubled as his lone finish outside the top 25 this year.
He also has recency bias as he just lapped the field in the form of an eight-stroke victory over the top-70 players on the PGA Tour at the St. Jude Championship. Like McIlroy mentioned, he got a front row seat to the Scheflfer show the first two rounds during which Scheffler clipped McIlroy by a combined 15 strokes.
This could change over the next two weeks. Young could grab a third. Fitzpatrick a fourth. There is still room for this debate to be decided, but the likeliest answer is trending towards the same one from 2022-25 making the winner of the award, coincidentally, consistent if nothing else.