Scheffler is $1,034,755 from passing Tiger Woods on the money list

Scottie Scheffler has $119,964,411 in career PGA Tour earnings. Tiger Woods has $120,999,166. The gap is $1,034,755, which at the BMW Championship means a three-way tie for third would be enough to make Scheffler the leading money winner in the history of the tour. After winning in Memphis last week by eight shots, he is not an outside bet to do it at Bellerive.

Is this a real changing of the guard?

No, and Scheffler said as much when it was put to him. He pointed to purse growth as the explanation and noted he is nowhere near Woods on the only measure that settles these arguments.

I'm not really too close to him in terms of career wins.

He is at 21 wins to Woods' 82 career total. What the money list is actually recording is the inflation of professional golf's prize funds over 30 years, driven first by the audience and television deals Woods himself brought in, and more recently by the PGA Tour having to defend itself against a rival league funded from Riyadh.

How do their first seven seasons compare?

This is where it gets genuinely interesting, because the per-start numbers are not close and the finishing records are.

Nicklaus collected $846,531 in total across those seven years, which is roughly what a good week pays a mid-pack finisher now. Woods was plainly the better closer of the three at this stage, with 16 more wins than Scheffler over a comparable stretch.

Where the two are close

Top-10 finishes. If Scheffler records one this week or next, but not in both, he will finish his seventh season with exactly the same number of top-10s as Woods had after his. Nicklaus, for the record, had 104.

That consistency is what his peers reach for first. Ryan Fox described Scheffler's run of results as the closest thing the tour has seen to Woods, and singled out his iron play as the reason. Viktor Hovland made a related point about last week in Memphis, where second place finished nine under and Scheffler shot 17.