ATLANTA – Since Tiger Woods said “Hello, world” in 1996, any historical context has become increasingly difficult. Comparisons to Woods are not only blatantly unfair, they almost always fall flat.

There have been outliers. Jordan Spieth’s 2015 win, including five wins at the Masters and US Open, along with top-five finishes at the other two Grand Slam stops that year, was special. Rory McIlroy’s 2012 win, four Tour appearances, one major (PGA Championship) and two of the season’s four postseason stops, was also impressive.

But as spectacular as those campaigns were, neither player could sustain that Tiger-like run. McIlroy was winless on Tour in ’13, and Spieth won a total of five times in his five years following that ’15 season.

If comparisons to Woods are a zero-sum game, then this, frankly, is the only measure of what Scottie Scheffler has accomplished this season.

Scheffler’s seasonal swear word at the Tour Championship, a four-stroke race that’s a bit misleading given the “dumb” (his word) starting-stroke format and how close the race for the circuit’s $25 million payday was midway through Sunday’s final round, was his seventh victory of the season. The last player to win seven times on Tour in a single season was Woods in 2007.

In fact, only Woods (’07, ’06, ’00 and 1999) and Vijay Singh (2004) have won seven or more events on Tour since 1983. And only Woods has spent more time at No. 1 in the FedExCup rankings in his career (85) than Scheffler (50).

Recap of the final round of the $100 million FedExCup season finale.

Then there are the historic milestones that Woods didn’t achieve, including Scheffler becoming the first player to win a major, The Players and the FedExCup in the same season. Scheffler also set a new earnings record with an impressive $62 million in total compensation, including his (unofficial) $25 million FedExCup and $8 million Comcast Business Tour Top 10 bonuses. It’s worth noting that amid the arms race in professional golf, Scheffler’s total on-course earnings, including those two well-earned bonuses, are more than the average NFL quarterback will earn in base salary this season.

But it’s Scheffler’s enduring brilliance and unmatched consistency that places him alongside Woods. He has won 13 times in the last three seasons, starting with his breakthrough Tour win at the 2022 WM Phoenix Open.

“His consistency, his attitude, I feel like he brings the same attitude to the course every day, no matter what position he’s in on the scoreboard,” McIlroy said of Scheffler. “He’s just amazing to watch, the way he handles himself on the golf course. Yeah, we look back at 2024 and it’s clearly one of the best individual years a player has had in a long time.”

That attitude was tested midway through the final round at East Lake with a tee shot on No. 7 that just missed the out-of-bounds marker (bogey) and a shanked shot off the bunker on No. 8 (bogey) that cut his once-dominant lead over Collin Morikawa to just two strokes. Yet he never looked flustered or overwhelmed.

He followed up those blunders with three consecutive birdies and an eagle on the 14th^and hole that felt like a statement, an exclamation point on a season that was as sublime as it was surreal.

“I was definitely frustrated. I played really solid golf the rest of the week. I just had two bad holes in a row, basically,” said Scheffler, who closed with a 67 for a 30-under total, including (insert asterisk) his 10-under starting stroke advantage. “(Caddie Ted Scott) did a good job of reminding me that we’re still in control of the tournament, I’m still playing great, just go out there and get back to work, basically, the talk he gave me is just get back to work, and that’s what we did.”

At every step of Scheffler’s ascent to dominance, Woods has been the standard, with apologies to Scheffler’s contemporaries. Even the statistics that speak to the art of greatness are dominated by Woods, first, and then Scheffler. Last year, Scheffler’s strokes earned: tee to green total (2,614) was second only to Woods’ 2006 season (2,982). And this year, Scheffler’s 2,456 strokes earned: tee to green mark is almost a whole stroke better than second place (Xander Schauffele).

“I think that’s fair. I think all the statistics bear that out. I think the results bear it out,” Adam Scott said when asked if he would compare Scheffler’s dominance to that of Woods. “It’s been pretty incredible, right from the start at Bay Hill, I think. I think it’s comparable to those great years of Tiger. I think it’s very hard for someone to make the kind of distinction that Scottie did these days. I don’t think we’ve seen that in a long time. I think it’s harder to do that these days.”

While Woods’ greatest moments are etched into the fabric of his career – think of the chip-in at No. 16 at the 2005 Masters or the 12-footer at 72^nd hole to force a playoff at the 2008 U.S. Open — most of his 82 PGA Tour victories have come with a brand of golf Stewart Cink once called “prevention defense.” Scheffler’s game is just as mechanical.

While there’s no shortage of highlights in Scheffler’s career – his comeback birdies from No. 9 on Sunday at East Lake go on that list – his golfing style feels more relentless than flashy.

“I think the one thing I’ve always admired about Scottie is the amount of bogey-free rounds he’s shot,” McIlroy said. “If you look back over the last two, three years and you look at how many rounds he’s shot, he’s shot 4-under, no bogeys, it doesn’t look spectacular at all, but it’s just so solid, he doesn’t really get himself out of position. When you don’t make a lot of bogeys, the field has to do something really special to keep up.”

There are even similarities in the way the two compartmentalize off-course distractions, but Scheffler doesn’t have nearly as much experience with crisis management as Woods. Though charges for assaulting a police officer on Day 2 of this year’s PGA Championship were ultimately dropped, Scheffler’s second-round 66 after spending the morning in a cell and his eventual tie for eighth at Valhalla are testament to his resilience.

At 28, Scheffler has a lot of ground to cover if he wants to truly rival Woods’ decades of dominance, and even after three stellar seasons, there will be those who scoff at any comparison between the two. Maybe it’s too early, or too small a sample size. Or maybe we’re seeing the beginnings of something truly special.