Analysis: Xander Schauffele is now in the conversation with Scheffler for best year in golf

Scottie Scheffler already has six wins against the strongest fields along with the Masters and The Players Championship

Xander Schauffele is the British Open champion, and the PGA Tour must be thrilled.

The FedEx Cup is as meaningful as ever, a three-tournament stretch in August that could go a long way toward deciding who gets the players’ vote for PGA Tour player of the year.

Schauffele or Masters champion Scottie Scheffler?

Schauffele is only the ninth player in the last 40 years to win two majors in the same year (Tiger Woods did it four times), having won a thriller at Valhalla to claim the PGA Championship in May.

Since the Jack Nicklaus Award began in 1990, only one of those players was not voted player of the year. That was Nick Faldo, and there was a reason — he wasn’t a PGA Tour member, playing only seven tour-sanctioned events that year.

But do two majors — Schauffele’s only two wins this year — trump the astonishing season that Scheffler has produced?

It’s easy to look at Sunday at Royal Troon when Schauffele played what he called “the best round of my life.” In a wind that made the rough look thicker, the pot bunkers deeper and the gorse bushes even more prickly, Schauffele played bogey-free for a 65 in which he missed only two greens, none on the back nine.

The lasting images of Scheffler? Turning a 6-foot par putt into a three-putt double bogey on the ninth hole that effectively knocked him from contention, and then topping a tee shot on 18 that was swallowed up by thick grass just 176 yards off the tee.

But that would be to forget what Scheffler has done this year, not just last week.

He won the Masters from ahead and The Players Championship from behind, coming back from a neck injury that nearly caused him to withdraw on Friday and erasing a five-shot deficit on Sunday.

His other four victories were all at signature events, with the $20 million purses and the strongest fields — Bay Hill and Harbour Town, the Memorial and the Travelers.