The PGA Tour on Monday announced Aldrich Potgieter as the 2025 Arnold Palmer Award winner, given to the PGA Tour’s rookie of the year.
Normally, a story like this would start with the big prize announced on Monday – the PGA Tour Player of the Year Award (aka the Jack Nicklaus Award), but that’s no surprise.
Scotty Scheffler wins again, just like he did in 2024, 2023 and 2022. While you might think Rory McIlroy’s chances of stealing this award are slim, it might never be that close (percentage of Tour members’ votes have yet to be released). Despite having three fewer wins than Scheffler, McIlroy had victories at both The Players and the Masters, the latter completing a career Grand Slam. McIlroy wins most at Augusta National memorable Win of the Year, but that alone isn’t enough to overshadow Scheffler’s work.
Scheffler won six times in 2025, including two major championships: the PGA Championship and the Open Championship. Now, he is just one U.S. Open victory away from completing his career Grand Slam.
His resume makes him an obvious choice to win a fourth consecutive Jack Nicklaus Award. At this moment, he remains firmly entrenched as the world’s number one golfer, and there’s really only one question worth asking: Will he? once Being replaced?
Scheffler has now won four in a row, one more than McIlroy’s three, and only Tiger Woods has won the PGA Tour Player of the Year multiple times since its inception in 1990. Woods won five in a row from 1999 to 2003 (and later three in a row from 2005 to 2007).
Scheffler’s past two years have generated little controversy over the rightful recipient of the award.
In 2024, he won seven times, receiving 91% of the vote. He’s also the 2022 champion (89%), and he’s been very close just one year (2023), when his 38% beat out Wyndham Clark, Viktor Hovland, Jon Rahm and McIlroy.
If Scheffler wins POY next year, he will tie Woods for the most consecutive POY wins (five). At that point, the question becomes whether he can match Woods, who has won 11 times in his career.
There’s a good chance Scheffler will have more wins, although it’s too early to say he has a chance of beating Woods’ 11 wins.
That said, with 13 wins over the past two years, don’t expect him to leave anytime soon. His peers certainly don’t. Take Scheffler’s latest win at the Procore Championship in September. Scheffler played in just one of the typically somnolent offseason events, a Ryder Cup warm-up event as a member of the U.S. team. Lanto Griffin’s third-place finish was an important result as he improves his standing in the FedExCup Fall Championship as he desperately tries to qualify for full 2026 PGA Tour status. In an emotional post-race interview, Griffin talked about winning Q-School last year, extending his Tour longevity, and how it all comes together at Procore. To him, every point counts.
