PINEHURST, NORTH CAROLINA | At Augusta National Golf Club, journalists conduct their formal interviews during the Masters in a room some way from the course. It is well-lit, tiered and air conditioned. The furniture is dark brown and somber. Each seat has its own microphone. As everywhere at Augusta, the dominant color is green.
In this room three years ago, Scottie Scheffler was being interviewed. He was not the man of the moment as he is now. We knew a lot about his golf but little about his personality, so one pesky journalist asked: “Scottie, when I get back to the U.K., people will say to me, ‘What’s Scottie Scheffler like?’ What do I tell them?”
Scheffler hemmed and hawed. He looked uncomfortable. “What do you mean?” he said. The questioner repeated himself: “What are you like? How would you describe yourself?”
“I don’t know,” Scheffler replied. “You’d better ask my friends.” Clearly, he found the question uncomfortable. Happy to talk about his golf, he was too modest to talk about his character.
The Scheffler of June 2024, 38 months later, knows who he is all right. He is arrow-straight and completely without artifice, the same from midday to midnight. To question whether Scottie Scheffler is his own man is as silly as asking if the sun rises in the east.
Scheffler’s twin virtues of self-certainty and plain decency support the rest of his character as his legs support his body. They are a large part of why he is ranked No. 1 in the world by some distance. His playing record for 2024 reads like a rugby team’s: 13 games, won five. He has won three of his past five events, four of his past seven and five of his past eight. These remarkable statistics generate an irresistible idea: He is a man in form, perhaps in the form of his life, the man to beat at Pinehurst.
“It’s his relentlessness [that is so impressive],” Rory McIlroy said. “Look, a lot of stuff went on in his life. They’ve just had a new child. He’s been through some struggles in his game, particularly with the putter, that he’s been able to turn around. But yeah, I mean, the word that I describe it as is relentless. It seems like every time he shows up, he is the guy to beat, and deservedly so. Seems like he is always in contention.’”
Just as Graeme McDowell, the 2010 U.S. Open champion, was described by Pete Cowen, the coach, as a man “…who is comfortable in uncomfortable situations,” so Scheffler is a man who makes a complicated life seem uncomplicated. That is one of his secrets.
McIlroy continued: “The most exciting thing about last week at Memorial was when he made the triple on 9. Everyone was, Oh, looks like he might let people in here, but he finds a way to steady the ship, make a few birdies when he needs to. He is undoubtedly the best player in the world by miles at the minute, by a long way.”
Scheffler will join No. 2-ranked Xander Schauffele and No. 3 McIlroy in the first two rounds at Pinehurst. “It’s always exciting to be part of a marquee group like that,” McIlroy said.
Scheffler, who will turn 28 on June 21, is tall and lean. Official PGA Tour records say he is 6 feet 3 inches and weighs 200 pounds. He doesn’t have the obvious athleticism of Dustin Johnson, who can do one-legged squats as easily as shooting a basketball, nor the visible muscularity of Bryson DeChambeau. Nor can it be said of Scheffler, as Jack Nicklaus once said of the late Tom Weiskopf: “He was more correct at more points of the swing than any other player who ever lived…”
There’s Scheffler’s famous footwork, for example, and the way he drags his right foot into the ball and often finishes his swing with his whole body facing the target and his right foot off the ground. The late dancer Fred Astaire would have been impressed, but many golf coaches would point to this swing peccadillo and want to correct it.
And there was the time when he was not putting as befitted the world No. 1. Phil Kenyon, the British putting guru, helped sort that out starting last autumn. Noting that Scheffler has not finished worse than tied for 17th this year and only once worse than T10, McIlroy observed: “Obviously the work they’ve done has really been paying off.”
Scheffler will join No. 2-ranked Xander Schauffele and No. 3 McIlroy in the first two rounds at Pinehurst. “It’s always exciting to be part of a marquee group like that,” McIlroy said. “Nos. 1, 2 and 3 in the world. I remember … watching on TV …Tiger, Phil [Mickelson] and Adam [Scott] the first two days. It’s cool to be part of these pairings. I think at this point that Scottie, Xander and myself are all experienced enough not to get caught up in it, just to go about our business, try to shoot a couple of good scores to put ourselves in positions going into the weekend.”
They will find Pinehurst’s No, 2 course to be as demanding as any they have played recently. It’s a course where equanimity of temperament is as important as accuracy of driving. The greens of Pinehurst No. 2 were designed not by Torquemada, the ruthless 15th-century persecutor in the Spanish Inquisition, though they could have been, but originally by Donald Ross, the acclaimed Scottish course designer.
On, and indeed around, these famous surfaces it’s not how, it’s how many.
Every player will at some time or another find himself confronted by a stroke that will make him think, How on earth can I play this shot? and then muse, What on earth do I do here?
For the next four days, watch the world’s best players using putters from yards off the greens. See them take a wood from around the putting surfaces. Look at the way they bump their ball into a bank so that it loses its momentum and rolls slowly and steadily toward the hole. Watch how easily a slightly mis-hit ball can lose its direction, catch a slope and roll off a green and 20 yards down a fairway or perhaps into a bunker.
“Everyone is going to be tested,” Tiger Woods said. “It is going to make for long rounds with the fall-offs and run-offs on the greens. The rounds time-wise are going to be a little bit longer. Then, when you’re out in the heat for that length of and period of time, that’s going to take a little bit of wear and tear on you.”
“I think I learned over the course of my career to stay as patient as possible. … Bad breaks are going to come, but it’s more about your response to those things than really receiving the bad break …” – Scottie Scheffler
Courses like this play to Scheffler’s temperament. A man who can be handcuffed and clapped into jail one morning and wrestle a difficult golf course into submission with a 5-under par round a few hours later clearly has exceptional control over his emotions. Is Scheffler a hothead? Don’t be silly. His mind may be in torment, but his facial expression and his demeanor scarcely change. He can be harder to read than a book written in hieroglyphics.
He remained this way even after that triple bogey on the ninth at Muirfield Village last Saturday.
“I was very frustrated, so I’m glad you couldn’t tell,” Scheffler said. “I think I learned over the course of my career to stay as patient as possible. I really didn’t hit that bad of a shot. It just hit a tree and went out of bounds. I kind of reminded myself I was playing good golf and as long as I kept a good head on my shoulders I could continue to go about my day and was able to bounce back nicely. Bad breaks are going to come, but it’s more about your response to those things than really receiving the bad break because over the course of a 72-hole tournament you’re going to get plenty of bad breaks and hit plenty of bad shots.”
“[Pinehurst has] grainy Bermuda [grass], so if you get a good lie, you can be a little more creative with what you want to do. If you have an iffy into-the-grain lie, you’re a bit limited in what you can do around the green. A lot of that is going to be missing in the right spots. But there are certain holes out there … you’ve just got to step up there and hit a great shot.”
And that is what Scheffler has been doing better than anyone recently: hitting great shots, holing good putts, keeping his emotions under control. So far this year he is having an annus mirabilis, a year of years, one that calls to mind the purple years of Tiger Woods. It will be interesting to see how he copes with the challenges of the next four days.