Here are the five nominees 2023 PGA Tour Player of the Year

Scottie Scheffler was named last year’s PGA Tour Player of the Year in September of 2022. This time around, the award is being doled out in January because of the FedEx Cup Fall Series, which extended eligibility for that award as well as PGA Tour Rookie of the Year.

Scheffler is among the five finalists for the Jack Nicklaus Award, going to the top player on the circuit.

He’s looking to become the first back-to-back winner of the award since Tiger Woods won it three times in a row from 2005 to 2007. Fred Couples and Nick Price are the only others to win it two times in a row since the award was first given out in 1990.

The Player of the Year for the 2022-23 season was finalized by the PGA Tour Player directors and members of the Player Advisory Council (PAC).

Voting for the Player of the Year and Rookie of the Year awards will take place among PGA Tour members who played in at least 15 official FedExCup events during the season. The voting will close on Friday, Dec. 15, at 5 p.m. ET.

The winners will be announced in January at The Sentry, the first event of the 2024 season, which marks the return of the calendar-based schedule.

Here are the five nominees, listed in alphabetical order below, for the PGA Tour Player of the Year.

Wyndham Clark

Among Wyndham Clark’s 28 starts this season was his first PGA Tour win at the Wells Fargo Championship at Quail Hollow in May.

The next month at Los Angeles Country Club, Clark validated his rise with his win in the U.S. Open.

He had eight top-10 finishes and missed only three cuts.

He finished third in the FedExCup standings, he was 13th in scoring average at 69.642.

Viktor Hovland

Viktor Hovland won three times in his breakout season, and while he didn’t claim a major, he won some heavyweight events: the Memorial, the BMW Championship and the Tour Championship.

He played 23 events and made the cut in all of them. In nine of those, Hovland finished in the top 10.

He was fourth in scoring average at 69.123.

Rory McIlroy

McIlroy won twice during the season, at the CJ Cup in South Carolina and the Genesis Scottish Open.

He had two second-place finishes and earned 13 top 10s.

McIlroy missed the cut at the Masters but tied for seventh at the PGA Championship, was solo second at the U.S. Open and tied for sixth at the Open Championship.

He was fourth in the FedEx Cup standings and was second in scoring average at 68.777.

Jon Rahm

Jon Rahm led the PGA Tour with four wins, which included a major and two Signature Events at the Sentry Tournament of Champions and the Genesis Invitational.

He made 18 of 20 cuts and had 10 top-10 finishes. Rahm was third in scoring average at 69.037.

Scottie Scheffler

Scottie Scheffler played 23 times and had two wins. He defended his title at the WM Phoenix Open, a Signature Event, and then won his first Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass.

He had the lowest scoring average, 68.629 which earned him the Byron Nelson Award.

Scheffler was sixth in the FedEx Cup standings after a season in which he had the most top-10s (17) on the PGA Tour. He made all 23 cuts.

PGA Tour Player of the Year winners

Story originally appeared on GolfWeek