Rex Hoggard suggests how successful Scottie Scheffler would have been in 2024 had Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau remained on the PGA Tour

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Scottie Scheffler wrote his name in the history books with an incredible 2024 season in which the world number one managed to win nine times worldwide.

Not only was Scottie Scheffler dangerously close to reaching double figures for victories, but the large majority of his wins came in some of the biggest events of the year.

The 28-year-old won the Masters for a second time, while he was visibly emotional as he clinched the Olympic gold medal. And, while the Hero World Challenge is potentially the least significant win of his on paper, it was a real statement of intent heading into the 2025 season, with Scheffler winning by six in the Bahamas.

Scheffler was unsurprisingly voted as the PGA Tour player of the year. He won four signature events, became the first player to retain the Players Championship, and got across the line at the Tour Championship.

How Scottie Scheffler’s year may have been different had he faced Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau more often

Of course, some will inevitably wonder what would have happened had Scheffler also had to contend with LIV Golf‘s best, with the likes of Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka only now playing against the two-time major winner a handful of times a year.

Speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast, Rex Hoggard has suggested that there is next to no chance of Scheffler winning quite as many times as he did if they were in the mix. However, he still believes that they would be unable to knock Scheffler off golf’s summit.

“His floor is higher than anyone else’s, and when he’s playing his best, his ceiling is higher than anyone else’s, so that puts you in a different category. Well put on the idea of a Jon Rahm, or any of the players who joined LIV Golf – it’s amazing how we’ve sort of moved on from Brooks – Bryson was the most popular player on the planet in the middle of the summertime. So you’re right, we have to be careful when it comes to ignoring those guys,” he said.

“But even if they were on tour, and someone asked me this in a radio interview last week that should there be an asterisk on not just this season, but maybe the last two seasons?”

“You can only play who’s in front of you, is the cliche. So in that case, I don’t know how things would have played out had LIV Golf not come along and you still had Brooks and Bryson and Jon Rahm and everyone else on this side of the fence playing against each other. Certainly, I don’t see Scottie winning nine times, because it just becomes a question of math, it’s just statistically impossible to imagine Jon Rahm’s not going to have a good week the week of the Players Championship. But he would still be dominant. I still feel like he would be world number one.”

The LIV Golf players who actually beat Scheffler in 2024

There is only a small sample size to look at. Scheffler only competed against LIV Golf players at five events during the year – the four majors and the Olympics.

Obviously, he won two of those five events, so no LIV players finished ahead of him at the Masters or at Le Golf National.

But there were no LIV players who finished above him at The Open Championship either, with Jon Rahm joining him in seventh place at Royal Troon.

Bryson DeChambeau finished second at the PGA Championship, while he also won the US Open. And it was at Pinehurst where Scheffler had his worst showing in a major in 2024 – with five LIV players finishing above him that week.

That means that in five events, Scheffler was below six LIV players across the entire year. As Hoggard suggests, it may not have been enough to see him win nine times still, but clearly, Scheffler was on another level to anyone else on the entire planet this past year.