Scottie Scheffler made an honest admission before The Scottish Open this week that blew Rex Hoggard’s mind.
Scheffler is the world number one by quite some distance, and his record on the PGA Tour this season has been exemplary.
The 29-year-old has finished inside the top-25 in all of the 14 events he has played this season and he has three wins and 11 top-10 finishes to his name as well.
Scheffler is in a battle with Rory McIlroy in the PGA Tour Player of the Year race, and it’s a real toss-up between the two players right now.
The man from Dallas, Texas, is one of the PGA Tour’s biggest draws, so it will obviously be important for the new CEO Brian Rolapp to keep him on board regarding any future plans.
PGA Tour warned about future plan which Scottie Scheffler may not be on board with
The three-time major champion will be playing outside of the United States for the next two weeks – something that doesn’t happen too often.
Scheffler actually added the Scottish Open to his schedule ahead of The Open only last month.
However, the world number one is known for his preference of playing his golf in America.
There has been talk ahead of the Scottish Open this week that the PGA Tour could move towards more of a worldwide schedule in the future.
And that might not be conducive with Scheffler’s plans.
When speaking on The Golf Channel’s Rex and Lav Podcast, Hoggard suggested that he was stunned by something that Scheffler admitted before the start of The Scottish Open this week.
He said: “I was a little surprised and I guess I should have known it when in that conversation that Scottie said he has never played in Australia or Asia.
“My mind started to spin because it seems like he has been playing the game for long enough, but yes he prioritises his game at home.
“It is going to be interesting going forward in his career as that is only going to manifest even more as his family grows and as baby Bennett gets older and he wants to start coaching the baseball team, or whatever Scottie wants to do as a Father. It’s not going to change.
“It’s sort of the exact opposite of the conversation you had with Rory this afternoon. He was asked and said that he has not had a vacation in over a decade. That has changed for Rory and he said that his New Year’s Resolution was that he is going to have more fun.
“They went skiing with his family earlier this year, went on a guy’s trip. He has really taken his opportunity to come in the opposite direction. I don’t see Scottie coming back.
“And to that point turning more events into what they have created here. Guy Kinnings, the CEO of the DP World Tour, he and I were talking and I asked him if he had met Brian Rolapp the new CEO of the PGA Tour. He said he had and he really liked what he had heard. He was wildly impressed by what he heard. He really liked what he heard when Brian said he wants to grow the game internationally.
“Guy’s hands went in the air, like look at this, look at what we have created here. We could do this at the Irish Open, which has been turned into a really good event on the European Tour, the flagship event the BMW PGA Championship later this year. You have the BMW International in Germany. All the events in the Middle East, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. They have created this international footprint which would be really easy for the PGA Tour to co-op and do exactly what they have done here and co-sanction and bring everybody together and do something that Rory suggests could be really cool.
“But I think the line in the sand would be that I think there is more Scottie Scheffler’s on the PGA Tour and in the upper hierarchy of golf than there are Rory McIlroy’s.“
Then Lavner chimed in with his take on the potential formation of a so-called ‘world tour’.
Lavner explained: “They would have to create incentives that would just make it impossible to turn down essentially.
“So instead of a Scottie Scheffler playing at the American Express, why would he want to go and play the Dubai Desert Classic or why would he want to play the Abu Dhabi Championship? You would have to make it so lucrative either financially or with FedEx Cup points or the field or the competition or the golf course.
“There has to be incentives other than let’s just take some of the marquee events on the DP World Tour and make them co-sanctioned events on the PGA Tour.
“Then it is also creating even more of what we currently have on the PGA Tour, which is an A&B Tour of Signature Events and full field events.
“Do you then just have the Abu Dhabi Championship in the early part of 2026? If you make that a Signature Event, do the best of the rest then play the American Express? Well, if you are American Express you don’t like that scenario where all of a sudden you are getting numbers 71-150 on the PGA Tour as opposed to a sprinkling of the very top players.
“I love the idea. I would absolutely love to see a worldwide schedule. It does seem though, like the PGA Tour is going down the US centric side and making sure it’s sort of American based and LIV Golf has branded itself now, with so few stops in the US, as the world tour and is visiting parts of the world which are potentially starved from elite golf competition.“
Scottie Scheffler has three professional wins outside of America
Scheffler has enjoyed some success outside of the United States.
He has won three tournaments – The Olympics in Paris in 2024 and the Hero World Challenge at Albany Golf Club in the Bahamas in 2023 and 2024.
However, it’s clear to see that the American barely travels outside of his homeland aside from the two-week stretch in Britain in July.
He is a husband and father first before a professional golfer, and family will always be his priority.
If the PGA Tour are seriously considering evolving into more of a worldwide operation, they had better hope that Scheffler will consider playing a fair chunk of his golf overseas.
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