A look back at the biggest PGA TOUR season in history

That loud, steady knocking you hear at the door? That’s the 2020-21 PGA TOUR season, or super season if you will, delivering some news: This is it. Last stop. We’ve reached our destination. As Sinatra might say, it’s the final curtain.

Fifty events – six of them major championships – across the United States and beyond, giving us an overflowing bushelful of great storylines and winners. We had it all: some powerful resurgences, lots of bonus golf (playoffs), new faces hoisting trophies, and of course, history, like a 51-year-old winning the PGA Championship … all of it wrapped up with a bow and delivered to the front stoop at East Lake Golf Club in Atlanta this week, where 30 elite golfers have made it to the finish line. Not since 1975 (51 events) had the TOUR staged so many tournaments in one season.

The Covid-19 pandemic that halted the 2019-20 TOUR season for three months at THE PLAYERS Championship in March of 2020 would cancel some events and move others, and eventually spin us into a new season unlike any we have seen before. Golfers are creatures of habit, and the new jam-packed schedule threw some off their normal rhythm. Still, through it all, week to week, the golf delivered, from then-47-year-old Stewart Cink winning in Napa in September to Sunday’s stirring six-hole playoff between Bryson DeChambeau and Patrick Cantlay to decide the second leg of the Playoffs at the BMW Championship.

We have witnessed indelible snapshots we will not forget. Hideki Matsuyama became the first male player from golf-rich Japan to win a major championship, donning a green jacket at the 2021 Masters. That was only five months removed from a Masters played in November, another first, in which Dustin Johnson won. Interestingly, Rahm and Johnson would tussle much of the season to be World No. 1. (Currently, Rahm is on top, with Johnson second.)

“It’s hard to categorize the year, just because of how much has been going on, especially in the last two months,” Rahm said at last week’s BMW Championship, the second of two FedExCup Playoffs events, and the penultimate tournament of the season. “It’s been a lot.”

Rahm’s year, in abbreviated Cliff’s Notes: He twice tested positive for Covid-19 (once when leading The Memorial by six shots through 54 holes), collected his first major championship (the first Spaniard to win a U.S. Open), and had to sit out the Olympics in Tokyo. Rahm was the last person to arrive to the Masters in April, for good reason: He and his wife, Kelley, had just become first-time parents to a son they named Kepa. That’s a lot to jam into a single calendar; Rahm will not soon forget his 26th year on the planet.

The events most would consider to be the eight largest tournaments of the 2020-21 season – six majors, THE PLAYERS and the Olympic Games – were divided nicely amongst eight different champions, ranging from 51-year-old Phil Mickelson (2021 PGA Championship) to 24-year-old Collin Morikawa (2021 Open Championship).

DeChambeau brought rugged Winged Foot to its knees at a delayed U.S. Open in September. Justin Thomas sizzled on the weekend (64-68) to win THE PLAYERS in March. Fortysomethings such as Cink, Sergio Garcia and Lee Westwood showed renewed vigor in their games.

Cink won twice, opening his campaign by winning the Safeway Open with his son, Reagan, on his bag. It was his first TOUR victory in 11 years. Garcia won at Sanderson Farms, stiffing an 8-iron tight for a winning birdie at the 72nd hole. Westwood, who was fast closing in on his 48th birthday, camped near the top of the leaderboard for two weeks in March, running second in two huge events: the Arnold Palmer Invitational (to DeChambeau) and THE PLAYERS.

We had new faces winning, victories posted by such exciting players on the rise as Jason Kokrak (twice a winner), Max Homa, and Mexico’s tandem of Carlos Ortiz and Abraham Ancer. Six majors in the season, along with a PLAYERS, three World Golf Championships and so many other marquee events … it gave us a never-ending drumbeat of big-time golf.

Not that it was all was easy, especially for those hitting the shots. They did what they could, and rested when they found windows to do so, but few players ever rested for very long. Instead of making the short trek from the opening FedExCup Playoffs event in New Jersey (THE NORTHERN TRUST) directly to the BMW Championship in Baltimore, Rory McIlroy, a new father himself, stole a day to fly home to Florida to see his wife and baby daughter. It helped him to refresh and recharge.

From the start of the post-pandemic schedule in summer 2020 through this week’s TOUR Championship, McIlroy said he will have played in 34 events, which included his first Olympics start in Japan. (McIroy, playing for Ireland, fell short of a bronze medal in a wild seven-man playoff; C.T. Pan of Chinese Tapai took bronze.) The Ryder Cup (McIlroy’s 35th event) in Wisconsin awaits in a few weeks. McIlroy did manage to collect his first PGA TOUR trophy since late 2019 when he captured the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, N.C. That was a nice moment.

“All that in a space of 15 months, it's a lot of golf,” McIlroy said at last week’s BMW. “It's probably too much for me. I've played more than I probably should have and feel like it's just sort of all caught up with me.”

For international players on the PGA TOUR, attempting to travel in the era of Covid has proved very challenging. Adam Scott and his family (he has three young children) are based in Switzerland. At the conclusion of the Open Championship at England’s Royal St. George’s, Scott was unable to travel home, as the United Kingdom resided on Switzerland’s “red” list for travelers. So Scott spent his off-week week in Spain instead, his seventh consecutive week away from home. He said travel restrictions made it difficult to spend time in person with his coach in 2021. He didn’t even bother to try to get with his physical trainer.

“I'm not complaining about anything,” Scott said at the Wyndham Championship, noting that not many of his fellow pros are playing the PGA TOUR out of Switzerland. “I've made a lot of these decisions and I'll live with whatever it is, but yeah, from a golf side of things, if I just lowered my expectations a bit, I think the frustration levels would have been down.

“I missed the boat on finding the right cadence for the ‘super season.’ It certainly feels like here in the States that a lot of things are returning to a bit more normal, you would say, and hopefully as we go into next season, (we can) fall back into so many old rhythms.”

There was one player whose World Ranking qualified him to compete at the Olympic Games in Tokyo, but he was leaning against going in the months beforehand. With a major championship right in front of the Olympics and a World Golf Championships event (FedEx St. Jude) and FedExCup Playoffs lurking shortly afterward, going all the way to Tokyo might not be the most prudent move in pacing himself. In the end, however, that player opted to go; he simply didn’t want to live with the regrets he might harbor in his heart if he didn’t.

Xander Schauffele was glad he went. He left Tokyo with an Olympic gold medal around his neck, fulfilling a dream he shared with his father, Stefan. It was one more big performance, big moment, inside a season that gave us so many. Yes, it has been a season like no other. And we still have one more big finish to go.