The 2020-21 Super Season on PGA TOUR Champions was one for the record books. The seminal moment was of course Bernhard Langer capturing his unprecedented sixth Charles Schwab Cup trophy but there were so many things that happened that sort of changed the landscape of the Tour for years to come. Obviously the biggest was Phil Mickelson playing six times and winning four. He clearly proved that he could very easily be a factor on PGA TOUR Champions if he plays enough times. Jim Furyk obviously showed that he’ll be a contender for the Schwab Cup for as long as he decides to play.

I’m prefacing this list by saying these are hard to do. I left out guys like Miguel Angel Jimenez and Jerry Kelly and Fred Couples and the list goes on.

Right or wrong, here are the top 10 players to watch into 2022.

1. Bernhard Langer

There will be a myriad of questions surrounding Langer in 2022, but the central one remains the same: can he still compete as he approaches his 65th birthday (August)? For the last several years, he’s answered the questions in resounding fashion with wins, top 10 finishes and more Schwab Cup titles. He did have his knees worked on this off season so that’ll be a lingering question. Is his health good enough as he hits his mid-60s to truly compete as he has for the last 15 years? Like all the aging greats in sports, Langer deep down loves to prove the doubters wrong. He likely won’t play every single week like he did in 2020-21 and he may not be No. 1 on the Schwab Cup standings for most of the year, but it still feels like he has at least one more year to make a run at a 7th Schwab Cup, even if he somewhat admitted after his latest that it could be his last. Even Fred Couples said in Phoenix that he thinks Langer will win at 65 years old. That would be wild.

2. Steven Alker

The more and more Alker played, the more people started to wonder if he would have been the man to beat if he turned 50 earlier in the season. In ten starts, he had nine top 10s and a win. Don’t forget about his runner-up finish to Mickelson to end the year at the Schwab Cup Championship. Alker finished 18th on the Schwab Cup points list in just ten starts. Just for comparison, Langer played 39 times during the 2020-21 season. When he got into the Schwab Cup Playoffs and finished T4, first and second, it became clear that he was going to be around for a long time. In 31 rounds on PGA TOUR Champions in 2021, he finished over par once and was under par 27 times.

3. Phil Mickelson

Mickelson finished 12th on the Schwab Cup points list in just six starts. The major question with Phil will continue to be, how much will he play? He made it clear in most of his interviews on PGA TOUR Champions that he loved to play with guys he grew up idolizing and playing with, but his motivating factor for working hard was still to try and compete with the best young players in the world on the PGA TOUR. All that said, with the amount of success he had on the Champions Tour and the amount of fun he appeared to have, you got to believe he’ll at least play six or more times if the schedule fits. You’d almost love to see Phil play 10 times or so and really give himself a chance to win the Schwab Cup. Although, if he plays six times in 2022 and wins four more tournaments, he’ll have a much better chance to win the Schwab Cup.

4. Jim Furyk

The Schwab Cup was his to win heading to the back nine of the final day of the season. Bogeys on holes 10 and 13 really hurt him and he finished second on the Schwab Cup points list. He still had a ridiculous first season on the Champions Tour with three wins and 18 top 10s in 26 starts. Furyk feels almost as good as any to win the Schwab Cup at some point in the next few years. He clearly will be a full-time player on the Champions Tour moving forward and he proved that his game is ripe to win. He also showed that his work ethic hasn’t changed from his prime TOUR days.

5. Scott McCarron

From 2017-2019, it felt like mccarron was the best player on the Champions Tour. He had the four-win season in 2017 and then the three-win season in 2019 to capture the Schwab Cup. But then his health failed. He shut it down in July of 2021 and had surgery on his foot, but we’ve seen him on social media taking full swings and he told our insider, Bob mcclellan, that he hopes to be ready for the season opener and that the best is yet to come. With the influx of rookies, people may have forgot that mccarron is an 11-time winner on PGA TOUR Champions. If he returns healthy, it’ll be interesting to see if he can regain his form as one of the best players on the Tour.

6. David Duval

Early in the season, there will be eyeballs on Duval, who will make his debut at the Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai. Duval hasn’t played the PGA TOUR regularly since 2014 so the biggest question will just be how good his game is and if he can compete against the best over 50. But he’s a 13-time TOUR winner and former world No. 1 so he’s got to be on this list and there will be a lot of natural excitement to see how his game holds up.

7. Rob Labritz

It’s becoming more and more common to see non-TOUR stars become stars on PGA TOUR Champions. Just in the last several years, there are examples like Scott Parel and Ken Tanigawa and Steven Alker that come to mind. Labritz of course won Final Stage of PGA TOUR Champions Q-School and got extremely emotional afterwards. It really felt like he genuinely realized a dream and now we’ll see if the longtime New York club pro can hang. That 64 that Labritz posted on Sunday of Final Stage to medal by three shots was enough for me to believe that he has the game to compete. And it just feels like he’s going to work his tail off to show that Q-School wasn’t just a flash in the pan.

8. Steve Stricker

Is this the year Stricker really concentrates on PGA TOUR Champions full-time? The Ryder Cup responsibilities are done so maybe Steve finally decides to make the Champions Tour his home. Stricker has seven Champions Tour wins in 35 career starts since starting to play in 2017. He played 13 times between the 2020-21 season, which isn’t enough to make a legitimate run at Schwab Cup. He played seven times in 2018 and nine times in 2019 for perspective. Of the 13 starts last season, he finished in the top 10 eleven times so he’s one of the best players on Tour. The one thing Stricker has never done on the Champions Tour is competed in the playoffs. It runs up against hunting season, but maybe, just maybe, 2022 is the year he goes for it.

9. Darren Clarke

Clarke was the headlining rookie of the 2018 class, but success didn’t come right away. He had no wins in six starts late in 2018 and then no wins in 22 starts in 2019. Clarke found his way in 2020-21 to the tune of three wins, nine top 10 finishes and closed sixth on the Schwab Cup standings. If he can get a little more consistent on the weeks he doesn’t win, he really has a chance at the Schwab Cup. The Schwab Cup Playoffs were sort of a good example of the ying and yang of Clarke. He finished T11 at Dominion, 45th at timbertech and then tied for third at the finale. There was also a two-week stretch late in the year where he finished T70 at Ascension (almost last) and then won the next week at the Sanford International.

10. Ernie Els

There was a lot of good from Ernie in 2020-21: the 18 top 10 finishes, the two wins, the fourth-place finish on the Schwab Cup standings. It also felt like there was another gear that Ernie could get to at some point. For example, both of his wins came in 2020, so he went the final 26 starts of his season without a win. If he got a third or fourth win, he likely would have won the Schwab Cup. Most of his stats really stand up against the entire Tour. He was fourth in driving distance, third in greens in regulation, first in eagles and eighth in putting average. The only thing that at times got away from him was his driving accuracy. He was 64th on Tour in that category.