The long summer of professional golf has arrived, but it will be gone before you know it. Just six weeks separate players from the beginning of the FedEx Cup Playoffs on the PGA Tour with a dash to the postseason beginning with a mini Midwest swing. This stretch of tournaments follows the third major championship of the season, the U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club, and precedes a two-week stint in the United Kingdom for the Scottish Open and the 151st Open Championship at Royal Liverpool.
Last we left off, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler was enjoying a historic season from tee to green and had done no worse than a T12 finish in the calendar year. Despite the landscape of golf evolving by the second, Scheffler’s dominance remains. The Players Championship winner is without a trophy since his triumph at TPC Sawgrass, but there is little doubt the river card could play right into his hand.
Wyndham Clark became a first-time major champion at LACC and has seen his career win total go from zero to two in the span of four tournaments. LIV Golf members Brooks Koepka, Cameron Smith, Dustin Johnson and Bryson DeChambeau are flashing form while Rory McIlroy has rediscovered his consistency from the early stages of the year.
The Power 18 provides insight as to how golfers are currently performing with benefit given to their play over recent events. It is a wider lens than simply what happened at the last tournament to be played but more narrow than the Official World Golf Rankings, which take into account how more than 2,000 golfers perform across an entire season.