AGAIN: IS SCHEFFLER THE BEST GOLFER SINCE TIGER AS MCILROY STUMBLES AWAY?
Little bothered him on a crazy weekend at Quail Hollow, where he looked like a player who will win many majors — more than McIlroy, who was flustered with a nonconforming driver and blew off the media
He was forced to hit a mudball into the water. He watched a gigantic snake slide onto a fairway, among many creatures at Quail Hollow. He saw Rory McIlroy use a conforming club, after an official tested his driver as nonconforming and turned his post-Masters ride into a nightmare — but not before a volunteer plunged into a lake to find his ball.
Then he observed Jon Rahm, forgotten on the renegade LIV Golf tour despite a $300 million signing bonus, make a small run Sunday. “Hard to express how hungry I may be for a major,” said Rahm, “about as hungry as anybody can be in this situation.”
None of it mattered to Scottie Scheffler.
He showed up, played 72 holes of golf and has returned — amid so much foolishness — as the premier champion of current times. He authored his third major title, the PGA Championship, on a course described by veteran Hunter Mahan as “a Kardashian, very modern, beautiful and well-kept. But it lacks a soul or character.” Why would Scheffler care about anything? He wasn’t bothered by Bryson DeChambeau, who fell Saturday, or Rahm, who fell on the final afternoon.
He hit his final putt, raised his hands and, with a rare fervent twist, flung his cap onto the green and slapped his hands for the crowd. “Let’s go!” he said. He hugged his caddie, then hugged his wife and his son. Meredith told Bennett, “You don’t know what just happened, but that’s pretty cool.” Then Scottie took Bennett inside the scoring tent, where he let him play with the scorecard holder. When someone mentioned his coach, Randy Smith, Scheffler began to choke up some. Then they flew back to Dallas.
There it was: Golf as we’ll know it for some time.
He’ll say the back nine will bother him, when he allowed the lead to dwindle. Did you doubt him. I didn’t. “I hit the important shots well this week, and that’s why I’m walking away with the trophy,” Scheffler said. Remember what he once said about remaining on the PGA Tour and rejecting massive money with LIV Golf: “I built my entire career here on the PGA Tour and I wasn't willing to leave it. I feel like I'm maturing as a person on the golf course, which is a good place to be. I believe that today's plans were already laid out many years ago, and I could do nothing to mess up those plans.” That’s why he got excited. He stuck around while Rahm left.
Said his father, Scott, by the green: “Words cannot describe what we just witnessed. You are so tough. We are so proud of you. Thank you for never giving up, Scottie.”
Certainly, the supreme player isn’t McIlroy, who might have been at the Masters when he finally completed his career Grand Slam. But in Charlotte, where he heard hurrahs, he blew off the media and has returned to a funk after his driver exceeded USGA limits. This happens in golf and shouldn’t be confused with steroids. The same thing happened to Scheffler, who simply switched. But Xander Schauffele said, “It didn’t go down very well” when he was called a “cheater” with a nonconforming driver, and imagine how a torn McIlroy deals with joking barbs weeks after his life triumph.
Through it all, what we know about Scheffler is that he didn’t end up in morning jail and didn’t have broken glass on the palm of his right hand — the only moments when life nailed him atop his sport. Shockingly, those were episodes that quieted him the last four majors. He didn’t stop his car despite a fatal accident near Valhalla Country Club in Louisville — the cop, Bryan Gillis, told The Athletic that he kept his uniform pants and Scheffler’s handcuffs. And Scheffler recovered from a puncture wound after drinking wine while making Christmas ravioli.
“I can’t live in a bubble, got to live my life, and accidents happen,” he said this year. “You know, it could have been a lot worse.”
Said his caddie, Ted Scott: "Last year, Scottie Scheffler was traveling to the course and got arrested. A crazy story unfolded. One of my favorite quotes is from Mike Tyson and it goes likes this: ‘Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.’ The question is, once you get punched in the mouth, what are you going to do about it?”
He wins, as usual. “He stepped up on No. 10, hit a great drive and I said, ‘There he is!’ ” Scott said. “He started hitting it great, started feeling comfortable and that’s back to Scottie Scheffler golf! Here we go, baby!” In a new TV ad, Nike references the Valhalla arrest.
Now that he is back, we should study him. How does he maintain poise and prestige when few other golfers do? To close the third round, he let out a rare bleep after one of six birdies that day. “(Expletive) yeah, baby?” he said. That’s all right, Scottie. “I typically don’t show much emotion. I don’t know how much I showed there. I don’t really think about what I’m doing,” he said. “I just felt like I hit two really good shots in there … and was able to just take advantage of the opportunity. Wherever the emotion came from, it felt like an important part of the round to finish the right way.”
Generally, he worries about zero — except praying a bit when he was in jail. “I try to focus as much as I can on executing the shot, and there's things out there that you can't control," Scheffler said. “I can't control what other guys are doing. I can't control getting bad wind gusts. I can't control how the ball is going to react when it hits the green. All I can do is try to hit the shot I'm trying to hit. That's what I'm focused on out there. Some days it works better than others.”
That explains why he has been ranked No. 1 for 103 consecutive weeks by the Official World Golf Ranking. It’s a number formerly associated with Tiger Woods, who spent 281 straight weeks at No. 1 and 264 straight weeks later. Is Scheffler playing the best golf since Tiger? We must ask again, until McIlroy or Rahm or DeChambeau beats him. Before age 29, only Jack Nicklaus, Woods and Scheffler have won at least 15 PGA Tour events.
“What we’ve seen Scottie do over the last three, four years is quite impressive,” Rahm said. “His ball-striking level is outstanding. Anytime you have a year where you’re being compared to Tiger in his prime, I don’t think I need to add anything else to that.”
Si Woo Kim, who scored a hole-in-one in another freak Quail Hollow occurrence, can’t help but rave about Scheffler. “I feel like I’m not on the PGA Tour,” he said.
“He’s in a spot where it would be shocking if he didn’t win today,” Schauffele said. “He rinses and repeats.”
So the unshaken man is the story again in the flappable game of golf, where McIlroy might not be OK and Rahm might not be OK. Scheffler carried a three-shot lead into the final round, an we never doubted him in his blue shirt before he won his first Wanamaker Trophy at 11-under. Who can forget how he looked when giving McIlroy his first green jacket at Augusta National? It belonged to him, right?
He will have many more trophies to hold. He is 28.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.