Move over, Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. Scottie Scheffler is joining you on one of golf’s most exclusive lists.
The World No. 1 became the third man to win at least three majors and 15 PGA TOUR events by the age of 29 after his triumph at the PGA Championship on Sunday.
With all of those victories over the past three years, we are officially running out of things to say about Scheffler. With that in mind, let’s turn to his peers to describe the man who once again proved he’s a level above anybody else in the game.
“I don’t know how he gets that ball to … It’s like he’s got a time machine and he goes forward in time and knows exactly what the wind is doing and lands that ball just right,” Brian Harman, the 2023 Open Champion, told ESPN on Sunday morning, according to Brendan Porath of the Fried Egg.
Scheffler’s excellence in the wind was on full display in his electric finish Saturday when he played the final five holes in 5-under – including 2-under on the treacherous “Green Mile” finish in very gusty conditions. Bryson DeChambeau – undoubtedly one of the world’s best players – was unable to navigate the same winds, playing the stretch in 3-over and effectively ending his shot at a victory.
Scheffler is incredibly well-liked on TOUR, and Justin Thomas – a top-5 player in the OWGR – joked it can be difficult to play alongside him.
“I think it’s hard to play with him and be like, ‘Oh, I want to play more like Scottie,’” two-time PGA champion Thomas said in March. “It’s like, no duh, who wouldn’t want to hit a lot of the fairways and a lot of the greens and be the best ball-striker statistically on Planet Earth for the last couple years?”
Scheffler’s physical gifts are well-documented. He consistently leads tournaments in strokes gained: approach and features one of the best short games in the sport. However, it’s his mental approach that’s often the most impressive aspect.
That was evident Sunday after Scheffler saw his three-stoke lead evaporate by the time he walked onto the 10th tee. He bogeyed three holes on the opening side to allow a charging Jon Rahm to match him at the top. While most players would have been rattled, Scheffler simply reset, made three birdies on the final nine holes, and watched as Rahm – and the rest of the field – struggled mightily to keep up.
“The times I’ve spent playing with him or even watched, his demeanor and his mental toughness and the way he plots his way around golf courses, and how he just wears people down, … I think his mental side is what separates him more than people realize,” Thomas said.
Rory McIlroy has long been effusive in his praise for Scheffler and has consistently pointed to his mental approach as something to be envied.
“I’m a big admirer of Scottie’s for a lot of different reasons, but every time I play with him and watch how he plays and how disciplined he is, it’s a really cool thing to watch,” McIlroy said after winning at Pebble Beach earlier this year, per TenGolf. “I’ve alluded to it this week, but honestly, just trying to take little bit of a leaf from his book.”
Scheffler might have won last year’s PGA Championship at Valhalla if not for a mind-blowing incident where he spent a portion of Friday morning in a Louisville jail cell before racing back for his tee time. That prompted an all-time joke from McIlroy at the U.S. Open a month later.
“Only thing that took him away from winning a golf tournament was being in a jail cell for an hour,” McIlroy said with a laugh, according to Kevin Prise of the PGA TOUR.
They say the best jokes are funny because they’re true, right?
With the Louisville police 476 miles away from Quail Hollow in Kentucky, nobody was left to keep Scheffler from winning the Wanamaker Trophy this time around.
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