Why Wyndham Clark deserves PGA Tour Player of the Year, LIV Golf's final hoorah, and Scottie Scheffler's money
Wyndham Clark picked up his third win of 2026 on Sunday after flipping a switch down the stretch at the BMW Championship and fending off Rory McIlroy. With the victory, the PGA Tour Player of the Year debate has become a legitimate one for the first time in four years.
With the POY chatter at full volume, it's worth mentioning that two things can be true at once: being the best player on the planet doesn't make you the player of the year, and being the player of the year doesn't mean you're the best player on the planet. We'll get more in-depth on that down below, but spoiler: I think Clark has done plenty to end Scottie Scheffler's four-year streak of taking home POY honors.
While Clark was out playing McIlroy at Bellerive Country Club - a major championship venue - Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, and Michael La Sasso were battling at LIV Golf Indianapolis at The Club at Chatham Hills, a non-major championship venue. The potentially final chapter of LIV's story being closed out with La Sasso besting the two biggest LIV stars was certainly a scene.
Welcome to Par Talk, a weekly read to get you caught up on all the happenings that took place in professional golf that you need to know. You can follow Mark on X @itismarkharris and email him at mark.harris@outkick.com.
The PGA Tour Player of the Year award isn't all that significant in the grand scheme of things. Approximately 99.9% of the golf world won't look back in five years and be able to name the player who took home the honors in 2026, yet that same crowd would be able to tell you who won the Masters 30 years ago.
The POY award does, however, create debate and discussion, two things we humans in sports love more than anything; therefore, we have to get into it.
Scottie Scheffler is the best golfer in the world. Nobody in their right mind would debate that statement, but that doesn't mean that he's put together the best year, and after his win at the BMW on Sunday, Clark is the one who (currently) owns that title.
Scottie Scheffler's 2026 highlights: Two wins, The American Express and the FedEx St. Jude Championship (by eight strokes), five second-place finishes, 12 total top-five finishes, lowest scoring average on the PGA Tour, zero major championship victories.
Wyndham Clark's 2026 highlights: Three wins, the CJ Cup, the U.S. Open, and the BMW Championship, six top-five finishes, one major championship victory.
Scheffler has had an incredibly strong and lucrative campaign, but Clark has him beat in the two categories we care about the most: total wins and major championships. While we can acknowledge that Scheffler's five runner-up finishes bolster his season resume, we can also admit that, even as a collective, they don't carry enough weight to trump Clark's extra victory.
If you want to play the game that Clark and Scheffler are neck-and-neck in the Player of the Year race ahead of the Tour Championship, that's perfectly fine, but only one player can win the award, and the one who hoisted a trophy at a major championship should win the theoretical tiebreaker.
Speaking of the Tour Championship, if Clark gets the job done in Atlanta to win back-to-back Playoff events, he would slam the door shut on the POY debate. If Scheffler, the odds-on favorite, finds the winner's circle, then we get to go through this exercise this same time next week. I'll be here.
As for Sunday's final round at the BMW Championship, it was a pillow fight between Clark and McIlroy, with Wyndham giving his five-shot lead away and looking completely out of sorts on the opening nine holes. McIlroy didn't earn any momentum really; he was more so handed it, but never grabbed hold of it.
Clark carded three consecutive birdies to close out Sunday's round to earn a three-shot victory. We'd be lying if we said it was overly exciting, but a three-shot win in a FedEx Cup Playoff event playing alongside career Grand Slam winner and fan favorite in McIlroy will always fall into the noteworthy category.
After securing his victory at Bellerive, Clark spoke about how he's one of the best players in the world. That confidence is understandably back, and he's absolutely correct in his assessment of being one of the best in the game today.
While Scheffler finished T-12 and 10 shots back of Clark at the BMW, that's not to say he didn't have a uniquely impressive week.
Following Sunday's action, he revealed he had been dealing with hand, foot, and mouth disease. Any parent to young children can attest that HFM is nasty, incredibly contagious stuff, especially if adults contract it, as it causes blisters in all three areas. Having blister-covered hands and feet while trying to play golf at the highest level seems both miserable and impossible, yet Scheffler shot four-under over the weekend to climb up the leaderboard.
With his T-12 finish at the BMW, Scheffler has earned just under $21 million this season, which is a crazy number given he's 'only' won twice. What's even more eye-opening is that the No. 2 player on this year's money list, Cameron Young, has earned $6.5 million less than Scheffler.
LIV Golf apparently has an investor in place to push the league into 2027. The emphasis on the word 'apparently' seems to be growing by the day, as only time will tell whether LIV Golf '2.0' will become a reality.
Speaking of reality, there is one where LIV Golf Indianapolis was the last LIV event the golf world ever saw. It will almost certainly be the last LIV event we see in its current form, with ginormous purses and a leaderboard with some of the game's biggest names involved.
Sunday's finish in Indianapolis was unique, with Michael La Sasso besting Jon Rahm by one shot and Bryson DeChambeau by two, but it also serves as a perfect microcosm of LIV's non-existent luster.
FRUSTRATED BUBBA WATSON CONFRONTS UNRULY FAN AT LIV GOLF INDIANAPOLIS IN INTENSE SCENE
A 22-year-old former NCAA champion from Ole Miss beating two of the best players in the world should create some sort of buzz, yet given the circumstances of the complete unknown and the fact that LIV has been on its final leg for months now, it's done virtually nothing.
The fact of the matter that will rile up the LIV Golf truthers is that if the same scenario unfolded on the PGA Tour, on a golf course people have at least heard of before, it would have been headline-worthy, at the very least.
Maybe it's oversaturation, maybe it's the fact that sports fans can only pay attention to so much. Perhaps it's the players involved or the Saudi's past-funding of the league that remains to be the biggest hold-up of interest.
I think it's more than fair to say it's a combo of all of the above, but it will be fascinating to see what unfolds with the league, and more so its players, in the coming months.