There was a leak, and there was a wildfire. First the leak. Sports Business Journal reported that the PGA Tour PIP results are out. An internal memo has been circulated informing players who have topped that chart. And, as many expected (or dreaded), Tiger Woods took the number one spot and a $10M bonus. For the third time since PIP’s inception. The current world no. 1, Scottie Scheffler, who has almost matched Woods’s historic season last year, was the runner-up.

Now, the wildfire. The report generated as much buzz as was expected. It was reasonable to expect that Scottie Scheffler would top the PIP list this year and take home a further $10M as the prize money. He had won the Masters. He had won the PLAYERS Championship. He has been jailed as well; hours before his second round at the PGA Championship. Yet he came second. “That’s wild to think about,” wrote Flushing It Golf on their social media handle. A similar disbelief was noticeable among most golf fans. “No way Tiger beats Scottie. The dude got arrested and still made his tee time…” wrote another.

Compared to Scheffler, Tiger Woods did a few things right. Like appearing on the greens, which seems to be enough to move the needle. The 49-year-old teed off only six times in 2024, withdrawing from his first appearance due to influenza. In the rest of the tournaments—all majors—Woods missed the cut in three. The last he appeared at was the PNC Championship. Scheffler, obviously, has teed off in more than double the number of events.

Dan Rapaport of Skratch tweeted, “Scottie Scheffler won 9 times, including the Masters and a Gold Medal, got arrested between the first and second round of a major championship, starred in some of the best memes all year, and held world No. 1 for the entirety of 2024… and didn’t win the Player Impact Program.”

“Ridiculous. .it’s way past time for the tour to move on from Tiger Woods. He’s nothing but a ceremonial golfer now,” commented another user. Well, there is no way the 15-time major champion can win it again. PGA Tour is doing away with the much-maligned PIP program that sought to reward players for their popularity. The amount of $100M distributed among the top 20 was slashed to $50M for the top 10 this year.

PIP looks at five broad categories to determine the final ‘leaderboard’: internet searches (the most searched golf entity on Google), earned media (the number of unique articles), brand exposure (the amount of time a player’s sponsor appears on TV on Saturday and Sunday broadcast), general population awareness (popularity among the common mass) and golf fan awareness (popularity among golf fans).

“Biggest joke and scam in the business. I don’t have to even look at the list to already know that Spieth was somehow in the top 10,” one user wrote. Jordan Spieth, who netted only three top-tens among 22 starts, was fifth raking in $4.5M, more than double what he earned this season ($2,732,591). Well, as for Tiger Woods, a few things might have helped him garner the most spotlight despite playing only a few times in 2024.

Making (some) sense of Tiger Woods’s ‘ridiculous’ PIP victory

It is reasonable to expect that Tiger Woods lost in one of these individual categories. But he appears to have compensated in the other ones. Only weeks back, it was reported that Scottie Scheffler was the most searched golfer on the Internet this year. Woods – and let this one sink in – has been atop that list for the past 20 years. A Golf Digest report citing data received from Google claimed that Scottie Scheffler did what none could in the past year. Largely thanks to his arrest that shot him to fame among non-golfers.

USA Today via Reuters

But then there was Tiger Woods. Firstly, Woods ‘debuted’ at the Genesis Invitational among considerable media spotlight. It was his first competitive golf in a PGA Tour official event (Hero World Challenge isn’t an official event) since bowing out of the 2023 Masters. On top of it, Woods also launched his apparel line-up, Sun Day Red. Unimpressive as it might have been, it was the talk of the golf town for the better part of February. The 82-time PGA Tour winner also made his 24th consecutive cut at the Masters, a record in the history of professional golf.

A few futile attempts at the major later, Woods announced he underwent his sixth back surgery. However, Tiger Woods teed off at the PNC Championship regardless, with his son, Charlie on toe. The 15-year-old should be thanked as well as he shot his dad into the spotlight again after a brilliant ace at Ritz Carlton. They couldn’t win but a runner-up finish was enough for the media limelight. So, while Tiger Woods topping the PIP list is indeed ‘wild to think about’, it perhaps was inevitable.