The PGA Tour announced Aldrich Potgieter as its 2025 Arnold Palmer Award winner on Monday, the honor given to the Tour’s Rookie of the Year.
Usually a story like this would lead with the big award also announced on Monday, PGA Tour Player of the Year (a.k.a. the Jack Nicklaus Award), but that one was hardly surprising.
Scottie Scheffler won it again, just like he did in 2024 and 2023 and 2022. While you may think there was a small chance Rory McIlroy could steal this, it was probably never that close (voting percentages among tour members were not released). Despite winning three fewer times than Scheffler, McIlroy had victories at the Players and Masters, the latter completing the career Grand Slam. McIlroy’s victory at Augusta was the most memorable win of the year, but that alone is not enough to eclipse Scheffler’s body of work.
Scheffler won six times in 2025, including two more majors, the PGA Championship and Open Championship. He’s now just a U.S. Open victory away from also completing the career Grand Slam.
His resume made him the obvious selection for his fourth straight Jack Nicklaus Award. And at this point, with him still holding a stranglehold as the top-ranked golfer in the world, there’s really only one question worth asking: Will he ever be supplanted?
Now with four straight, Scheffler has one more than McIlroy’s three, and only Tiger Woods has won PGA Tour Player of the Year more consecutive times since it was established in 1990. Woods won five straight from 1999 to 2003 (and later three more back to back to back from 2005 to 2007).
Scheffler’s last two years have left little debate when it comes to the award’s rightful recipient.
He won seven times in 2024 and earned 91 percent of the vote. He was also a runaway winner in 2022 (89 percent), and in only one year (2023) it was actually close, when his 38 percent edged Wyndham Clark, Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm and McIlroy.
If Scheffler wins POY next year, he’ll tie Woods with the most consecutive honors (five). At that point, the question turns to whether he can catch Woods, who won the award 11 times in his career.
It’s a good bet Scheffler will win a handful more, although it’s still too early to say he has a legitimate shot of scaring Woods’ total of 11.
That said, with 13 wins over the last two years, don’t expect him to go away anytime soon. His peers certainly don’t. Take Scheffler’s latest win, at the Procore Championship in September. Scheffler only played what is usually a sleepy offseason event as a Ryder Cup tune-up for Team USA members. Lanto Griffin took third, an important finish to improve his FedEx Cup Fall standing as he desperately tried to earn full PGA Tour status for 2026. In an emotional interview afterwards, Griffin talked about winning Q-School last year, extending his Tour life and how at the Procore it all came together. For him, every point counted.
He then said, with a slight smile but a touch of truth, what the rest of the field might have been thinking: “Kinda wish Scottie wasn’t here.”
