Scheffler & Korda dominate, McIlroy’s miss and a Woods ace – 2024 in review

How should we gauge the golfing year in 2024? Politically, turbulence continued with little sign of resolution, while executives came and went with unusual regularity.

Americans swept the men’s majors, bringing more heartbreak for Rory McIlroy, while Nelly Korda dominated a women’s tour that lost some of its biggest names.

Great Britain and Ireland were brilliant winners of the Curtis Cup, but the US finally caved in to player pressure for Ryder Cup team members to receive payment.

In a sense, those two headlines summed up the game; there was still room for heartwarming romance despite much of the elite end being swept along a largely unchecked river of greed.

There were some truly great performances yielding significant highs but there were also some worrying and tragic lows.

Let’s embark on a round to represent 2024 with, in no particular order, 18 of the key memories from the year.

World number one Scottie Scheffler defended the Players Championship to set the tone for the year. So many of the greats have triumphed at Sawgrass, but no-one had won the title in consecutive years, until Wyndham Clark lipped out on the last to hand victory to Scheffler last March.

The tall Texan won at Bay Hill the week before the Players, and was then runner-up in Houston before landing a second Green Jacket with victory at the Masters. Scheffler eased home by four shots from Sweden’s Ludvig Aberg, who was second on his major debut, with Eng;and’s Tommy Fleetwood tied third. Scheffler, meanwhile, won the Heritage a week later in a period of stunning, dominant golf. In Tiger Woods fashion of yesteryear, no-one came close to challenging his position as top dog all year long.

While Scheffler set the standards in the men’s game, Nelly Korda did similar on the women’s circuit. Korda beat Lydia Ko at the Drive On Championship in late January to signal a run of five consecutive wins, culminating in the 26-year-old’s second major win at the Chevron Championship. Korda was the first to win five in a row since Annika Sorenstam in 2004/5. She would go on to be the first player since Yani Tseng in 2011 to win seven tournaments in an LPGA Tour season.

However, despite being hot favourite for the US Women’s Open, Korda’s hopes drowned inside three holes at Lancaster Country Club in Pennsylvania. Playing the back nine first, she dumped three balls into the water at the par-three 12th to rack up a ruinous 10 as she missed the cut.

Proving world number ones were not immune from left-field shocks, Scheffler was arrested on his way to the second round of the US PGA Championship. He drove past a policeman to escape a traffic jam at the entrance to Valhalla. The officer alleged assault and Scheffler was taken to jail in handcuffs. The world number one warmed up in a cell, was sprung on bail and fired a 66. All charges were later dropped. You couldn’t make it up.

A discomfited Scheffler could not sustain his challenge and Xander Schauffele capitalised to land his first major. The American birdied the last to beat LIV’s Bryson DeChambeau on a course that proved far too easy for a major. Schauffele also won The Open with a sublime 65 at a far more testing, soggy, blowy Royal Troon on the Ayrshire coast. It meant US players won all four men’s majors for the first time since 1982.

DeChambeau atoned for missing out at Valhalla with the year’s most dramatic major victory, beating Rory McIlroy for the US Open at Pinehurst. McIlroy led by two with five to play and his decade-long barren run in the big four seemed over. But he bogeyed 15, missed a tiddler on 16 and devilish short one on 18 to open the door for a ragged DeChambeau.

The unconventional American fired the shot of the year from a fairway bunker to get up and down for a winning par at the last. It was LIV’s and his second major win. McIlroy’s haunted and shellshocked face in the recorders’ area was image of the year. McIlroy went on to win a sixth Race to Dubai but he would have swapped that for a fifth major.

How refreshing it was to see the Old Course played as the test it was meant to be when the AIG Women’s Open arrived at St Andrews in August. Lydia Ko’s long range and championship winning approach to the famous 17th was among the shots of the year, as she ended an eight-year drought in the majors. This after Korda, defending champion Lilia Vu, Jiyai Shin and Ruoning Yin all stumbled to share second place.

Ko was on a high from brilliantly winning the Olympics with her gold joining silver and bronze won at previous Games. The Kiwi’s triumph followed yet another Scheffler victory, as he raced through the pack with a closing 62 in Paris. He eclipsed Fleetwood’s plucky challenge after Jon Rahm and McIlroy had threatened golden glory in what proved 2024’s best day for golf, with so many big guns involved in such a dramatic shoot out.

Behind the scenes it was all change on the corridors of power. Guy Kinnings took over from Keith Pelley with the DP World Tour frustratedly awaiting an outcome in ongoing talks between the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia. Might the DPWT team up with the Saudi Public Investment Fund (PIF)? Many see it as an attractive option if the current stalemate continues. Northampton rugby’s Mark Darbon has arrived to replace Martin Slumbers at the R&A and Derek Sprague is the new man in charge of the PGA of America.

Beleaguered boss Jay Monahan still runs the PGA Tour but the commissioner wants a new chief executive. Will he be aided by incoming US president and golf nut Donald Trump, who insists he can heal golf’s civil war “in 15 minutes”.

The recruitment process is under way, as it is at the LPGA where Mollie Marcoux Samaan surprisingly called time on her three-year tenure.

Spectator bus chaos was the only downside to a triumphant Solheim Cup for the United States. Skipper Stacy Lewis inspired her side to hold off a spirited final day European fight back. Late home points in Virginia meant the continent’s hopes went up in a puff of smoke, just like one of Charley Hull’s cigs.

More impressive was GB&I’s Curtis Cup win. Catriona Matthew was captain fantastic, bringing calm, insightful management that was the hallmark of her two Solheim successes. On paper it was America’s amateur women who would win. On the Old Course at Sunningdale, the home side thrillingly had other ideas. A great weekend.

Events such as the Curtis Cup grow more wholesome, especially now US Ryder Cup players will receive $500,000 including a $200,000 stipend to play for their country. Money is golf’s biggest turn off, but greedy players and their administrators seem oblivious.

Still the number of majors won by Tiger Woods and that tally never looked like altering in 2024. Indeed, this maybe the year when we conclude he will not win again.

Woods battled to make the cut at Augusta but never came close to playing the weekends of the remaining three majors before undergoing yet more back surgery. He turned down the US Ryder Cup captaincy which surprisingly went to Keegan Bradley, to concentrate on PGA Tour talks with Saudi Arabia.

The best shot struck by a Woods this year was son Charlie’s hole-in-one at December’s family-friendly PNC Championship.

The PGA Tour proved a happy hunting ground for graduates from the DPWT such as Bob MacIntyre and Frenchman Mathieu Pavon. The Scot won the Canadian Open with his dad on the bag and then the Scottish Open for a pulsating victory that counted on both tours. A year to treasure for the Oban lefty. He and Pavon made it to the 30-man Tour Championship, as did Wolverhampton’s Aaron Rai.

Big names departed the LPGA Tour, including 29-year-old Lexi Thompson, who is stepping back from full-time play as fellow Solheim stars Ally Ewing, Marina Alex and Brittany Lincicome announced retirements. Major champions So Yeon Ryu and IK Kim also bade farewell and Catriona Matthew played her last Women’s Open.

Sadly the game lost too many fine names in 2024, with deaths announced for two Ryder Cup stalwarts, Englishman Peter Oosterhuis (aged 75) and the ‘Welsh Bulldog’ Brian Huggett (87). Both were great men of golf, architects of the modern game, who will be greatly missed.

The sport was shocked by the tragic loss of PGA Tour winner Grayson Murray at the age of 30 and the popular former pro turned broadcaster Mark Carnevale (64). Legend Chi Chi Rodriguez died aged 88, hall of famer Susie Maxwell Berning (83), former R&A head pro Jim Farmer (76) and the respected and much loved American writer Jeff Babineau (62) were also mourned in 2024.