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Scottie Scheffler Is On Track To Win More Than Any Pro Golfer — Ever

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Scottie Scheffler has been driving the same car since college, a Chevy Suburban that now has 178,000 miles and that he admits could use a wash.

“As long as it keeps running, I’m probably going to keep driving it,” he told reporters a few weeks ago. Now, coming off undoubtedly the best season of his career and on the verge of history, he’s got more than enough money for an upgrade.

During the 2021-22 PGA Tour regular season, which began in September, the 26-year-old golfer set a record for official on-course earnings at just a shade over $14 million. If Scheffler wins at the Tour Championship on Sunday—he currently holds a two-stroke lead—he will collect another $18 million.

Combined, that mark of $32 million for the regular season plus FedEx Cup playoffs would blow away the previous high by roughly $9 million. (Rory McIlroy earned a total of $22.8 million in 2019.)

It’s hard to overstate Scheffler’s dominance. He won four times this season in a span of just six starts, including the 2022 Masters at Augusta National Golf Club, where he fended off a late run from McIlroy to earn his first green jacket.

He added another six top-five finishes en route to becoming the world’s top-ranked golfer in March. Thanks to performance bonuses on top of his base pay from sponsors that include Nike, TaylorMade and

Titleist, Forbes estimates that Scheffler’s endorsement income over the past 12 months has grown to $12 million. His total haul of $49 million, which includes the potential FedEx Cup winnings, a $4 million regular season bonus from the Comcast Business Tour Top 10 and $1 million for winning the Aon Risk-Reward Challenge, would have placed him sixth on Forbes’ recent list of the world’s ten highest-paid golfers, $6 million ahead of McIlroy. (Scheffler missed the list because the FedEx Cup playoffs fall outside its tracking window.)

“It’s a great time to be a good golfer,” says Martin Conway, a professor at the Georgetown University Sports Management Institute. “[This is a] combination of his talent and arriving at a time when the inflation in golf earning opportunities has never been better.”

The PGA Tour’s average for winnings has risen exponentially over the past 40 years.

It’s true. Over the past decade, the on-course earning average for tour members has grown 57%, to $1.6 million. That figure balloons to an astronomical 4,094% when compared with 1980, the earliest publicly available data from the PGA Tour.

But even more cash is flowing into the sport thanks to the emergence of the LIV Golf. The upstart tour, which is backed by the $620 billion (assets) sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia, has not hesitated to shell out enormous sums just to entice players to its events.

Thanks to exorbitant sign-on payments totaling an estimated $370 million, LIV placed seven golfers among the ten highest-paid in the world. Phil Mickelson, Dustin Johnson, Bryson DeChambeau and Brooks Koepka all reportedly received nine-figure guarantees, roughly half of which industry experts believe they received upfront.


“Scottie Scheffler is now equated to performance.”

Martin Conway, professor at the Georgetown University Sports Management Institute

Scheffler hasn’t been tied to any LIV rumors as of yet, but he’s definitely a benefactor of a perfect storm. In response to LIV, the PGA Tour has made changes to improve the paydays and conditions for its top players.

On Wednesday, tour commissioner Jay Monahan announced a series of changes that include 12 “Elevated Events” for the 2023 regular season that will average $20 million in prize money, a doubling of the Player Impact Program to 20 players and $100 million, and a $500,000 guarantee for every fully exempt player.

The PGA Tour also plans to return to a calendar-year schedule in 2024 and introduce a handful of events that, like LIV, have no “cut.”

“It’s like being a Major League Baseball player in 2023 compared to 2002,” Conway says. “Maybe it’s comparable, maybe you’re not even as good, but the purses and the earnings opportunities are sky high.”

The potential payoff for those at the very top of their game is even greater. “I think of it in terms of the multiplier effect,” Conway says. He adds that winning one of the four majors, ranking No. 1 or earning more money than anyone else could make sponsorship opportunities double, triple or even quadruple.

Scheffler, who joined the PGA Tour in 2018, is getting close to that status. Born in Ridgewood, New Jersey, he later moved to Dallas, where he attended Highland Park High, the alma mater of Los Angeles Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford and Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw.

He too proved to be a natural winner, bringing home three straight individual state championships before leading the University of Texas to three Big 12 titles.

Can he similarly dominate the PGA Tour in years to come? Don’t bet against him.

“Scottie Scheffler is now equated to performance,” Conway says. “Ultimately he’s dependable and reliable. Performance day in and day out.”

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Austin Butler praises Jodie Comer’s work ethic on The Bikeriders

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Austin Butler has praised Jodie Comer’s work ethic in The Bikeriders, a new Jeff Nichols film inspired by a woman caught up with the culture of a 1960s motorcycle club in Illinois.

The movie follows the story of Kathy (Comer), who is drawn to Benny (Butler) – the newest member of the Vandals led by Johnny (Tom Hardy).

As the club evolves from a gathering place into a dangerous underworld of violence, Benny is forced to choose between Kathy and his club loyalty.

Butler said of his co-star: “I just have such a respect for her…. When you have a kind of a mutual love of what you do and care [about], we felt like we bonded very quickly.”

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Austin Butler reflects on Paul McCartney’s house party with Taylor Swift

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Austin Butler just shared the details of his wild night at Paul McCartney’s house party.

The star-studded affair was not only the most “insane” time Butler’s had in a while, but it was the most glamorous, being surrounded by his childhood icons and legendary music artists like Meryl Streep and Bruce Springsteen.

Butler, 32, reflected on the experience while speaking with Jimmy Kimmel, who was also lucky enough to be at the party. During the June 17 episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live, the two gushed about having last seen each other at McCartney’s house.

“Last time I saw you was at maybe the craziest party I’ve ever been to in my whole life,” Kimmel, 56, admitted before Butler agreed: “That was insane.”

Kimmel noted: “It was like a party where Tom Hanks is going: ‘Oh my God, can you believe who’s here?!’”

Emblem rockers like Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Ringo Starr graced McCartney’s home, leaving Hollywood’s elite to mingle with music royalty, the pair said. Even Taylor Swift was there, according to Butler and Kimmel.

The Elvisstar said the “Anti-Hero” singer wasn’t a normal guest, she was the DJ. “Yeah, she was DJing at one point,” Butler told Kimmel, who then quipped about how Swift isn’t booked and busy enough, she must oversee the music for McCartney’s party, too.

While Swift’s appearance may have been cause for celebration among some of the other guests, Butler confessed a different idol sent him into complete awe. He couldn’t believe his eyes when he saw Meryl Streep in the same room as him.

“She’s just the greatest. I felt like, you know in high school when you have a crush on somebody and they’re across the room and you don’t really know how to say hello to them?” he said. “That’s how it was. I saw her there and I couldn’t believe I was in the same room.”

Too star-struck to approach the It’s Complicatedlead himself, Butler headed into McCartney’s kitchen to bide his time and eat some vegan pizza. Thankfully, his friend offered to introduce him and Streep.

“I couldn’t believe I was meeting Meryl Streep with Paul McCartney’s vegan pizza in my mouth,” Butler confessed.

He was then pulled into a circle of people he couldn’t pass the opportunity to spend time with. Butler was invited to “have tacos with Snoop Dogg and Robert De Niro.”

“I dropped everything I was doing and I was there in a heartbeat,” he told Kimmel.

Another crazy conversation Butler had was with Bruce Springsteen. The 74-year-old recounted a time when he was fearless, hopping the fence at Graceland to sing Elvis Presley a song.

Butler had heard rumors that Springsteen had done that but wasn’t sure it was true until he confirmed. Of course, Presley wasn’t there when Springsteen approached his front door.

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Austin Butler says Bruce Springsteen once tried and failed to bring a song to Elvis Presley

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Austin Butler has recalled the epic story of Bruce Springsteen hopping the gates at Graceland to try and deliver Elvis Presley a song he had written.

The 32-year-old actor, who starred as Presley in the 2022 Oscar-nominated biopic Elvis, shared the “mythical story” during an appearance on Monday (June 17) night’s episode of Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Recounting a recent star-studded party that they had both attended, Kimmel said: “I got to watch Bruce Springsteen tell you a story about Elvis. Do you remember the story?”

“I had heard this sort of mythical story,” Butler responded, “and then to hear from him of him being a huge Elvis fan and then hopping the gates at Graceland to try and get up there and he knocked on the door and he wanted to give Elvis a song to sing.”

“Do you remember what he said to the guy? ‘Is Elvis home?’” Kimmel laughed, with Butler continuing: “And he said, ‘No, he’s in Tahoe,’ or something.”

“And this is when Bruce Springsteen, by the way, had been on the cover of Time magazine, on the cover of Rolling Stone,” Kimmel said incredulously. “I mean, he was not like some unknown kid from New Jersey. He was famous, jumped over the fence…”

“Somehow evaded the dogs,” Butler added. “He’s a fast runner.”

Kimmel remembered: “And he gave the guy a song he had written for Elvis and then Elvis never – I don’t know. Nothing happened. He didn’t record the song.”

“I’m so bummed I never got to hear that song,” Butler said.

Austin Butler retold a story of Bruce Springsteen wanting to give Elvis Presley a song to sing

Austin Butler retold a story of Bruce Springsteen wanting to give Elvis Presley a song to sing (Getty Images)

Butler’s performance as the King of Rock and Roll in the Baz Luhrmann-directed Elvis earned him his first Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

He’s since been booked and busy, starring in back-to-back projects, including Dune: Part Two, which was released in March, and the Apple TV+ miniseries Masters of the Air.

The latter tells the journey of a group of 10 men who fly an aluminum bomber, called the “Flying Fortress,” to battle German forces in WWII.

“It’s hard to resist the pulse-quickening action of this epic Second World War tale,” Nick Hilton wrote in a four-star review for The Independent.

“The Bloody Hundredth, staffed by men scarcely into adulthood, might be a glamorous bunch, but they are also losing their innocence. Playing out on a canvas in the skies, this is daring, big-budget filmmaking that just about sticks the landing.”

Butler currently stars in Jeff Nichols’s new crime thriller, The Bikeriders, alongside Jodie Comer and Tom Hardy.

The movie follows a Midwestern motorcycle club through the course of a decade as they evolve from a gathering place for local outsiders to a sinister gang.

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