There’s winning and then there’s winning at the right time. Scheffler is doing both.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — There’s winning and then there’s winning at the right time. Scottie Scheffler continues to do both.
With his second Masters victory, good for $3.6 million, and yet another signature event win, the 2024 RBC Heritage, Scheffler has amassed $61,258,464 in career on-course earnings on the PGA Tour. That figure has put him into the top 10 all-time, jumping him two spots past Matt Kuchar and Jason Day.
Tiger Woods leads the list at $120 million and while Scheffler has a long way to go, he’s now more than halfway there as a six-year veteran.
Then again, Scheffler is playing in this big-money era of signature events and elevated purses, but to his credit, he’s also winning the bigger-money events.
His 10 wins include two Masters, two Players (the richest event on the PGA Tour), two Arnold Palmer Invitationals, two WM Phoenix Opens (one of which was a signature event) as well as a Match Play and now the RBC.
With the recent winners list featuring a bunch of names you wouldn’t know, there’s still Scheffler.
Every so often, someone comes along who’s capable of taming the beastliest, most excruciating game that man has inflicted on itself with little more than a smirk and a shrug.
What Scottie Scheffler is doing to golf isn’t easy. It dang sure isn’t normal.
But see, he acts like it’s both.
The bad doesn’t fluster him. The good doesn’t seem to enthuse him. No cursing. No celebrating. Just the next shot. It’s remarkable, Scheffler’s untouched demeanor. You could call it a gift. Or robotic. Or mentally tough.
You could also, of course, call it boring.
Not that there’s anything wrong with that. In sports, the inevitable usually is boring.
On Sunday, that’s what Scheffler was: Inevitable. He didn’t just win the Masters for the second time in three years. He won after four days of, “Yup, there’s Scheffler.” The guy was widely expected to win it at the start – and then at the end, with most viewers rooting against him so the final round would be more competitive, he played even better while others faltered, turning it into a back-nine rout.
In a field with 89 of the world’s best golfers, including the PGA Tour’s briefly reunited LIV defectors, no one finished within four shots of Scheffler’s 11-under-par. Only hotshot rookie Ludvig Aberg (7 under) was within seven strokes. Then Scheffler smiled and put on another green jacket and went home to his wife and continued preparing to be a father, which was clearly his priority all along during this tournament.
He’s just so normal, right? To be this good at golf?
On Thursday, during the first round of the RBC Heritage, Scheffler mucked up the third hole, taking a double bogey. The rest of the day, however, he made very few mistakes en route to a 69 that put him, you guessed it, well within striking distance of the leaders. Slow and steady.
Only the all-time greats win this way, but with Scheffler, his budding greatness gets understated. Because his personality doesn’t lend itself to fame – or appear to have any interest in it.
In a sport known for greed and selfishness, two things embodied by the LIV players’ cash grabs, and in a sport where golfers are more increasingly becoming fine-tuned athletes, muscles bulging from under shirts, there’s beauty in the fact that Scheffler doesn’t come off like any of that.
He’s 27, but he looks – and carries himself – closer to 37, especially with the beard. He seems more like your friendly neighbor next door or your buddy from college who can make you laugh without saying much. The one who always answers the phone when you call, because “Man, I ain’t that busy.”
We should treasure this in a superstar, honestly, but something tells me we won’t.
In our society, we prefer our sports stars a certain way – brash, bold, quotable, eager for attention. We remember Barry Sanders admiringly for flipping the ball to referees after touchdowns, but it’s Deion Sanders that we still can’t stop talking about. Pete Sampras more often beat Andre Agassi on the tennis court, but Agassi was always the brightest star. Image is everything, if you recall.
It doesn’t take much to be entertaining in golf. My late grandfather loved Chi Chi Rodriguez because of how he used his putter as a sword. Heck, Patrick Cantlay played without a hat for last year’s Ryder Cup, and it led to an international incident.
With Scheffler, the most unique thing about watching him play is that he travels when he shoots. On each long-range shot, he “scheffles” his feet in this strange, untidy little dance move. It attracts your eye but typically doesn’t keep that golf ball from going where Scheffler intended, an indication that he has figured out something about the golf swing that hadn’t been discovered.
Scheffler has long been the best ball-striker in golf, hindered only by his putting. If he ever got that part of his game in order, they’ve said, no one else would have a chance.
Lately, he has gotten his putting in order.
With 2024 thus far being a free-for-all on the PGA Tour, with the recent winners list featuring a bunch of names you wouldn’t know, there’s still Scheffler. He keeps asserting his dominance. He has won three times in the past six weeks. He won at Bay Hill. He took The Players, even though he hurt his neck in the process.
Scottie Scheffler walks up to the No. 17 green during the first round of the 2024 Masters Tournament. (Photo: Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Network)
And now, he’s got The Masters in his pocket with the other three majors and Paris Olympics still out there to be won in 2024. Scheffler could be zeroing in on a historic run. He’s playing that much better than anyone else.
In Augusta this past week, in difficult conditions and gusty winds, Brooks Koepka (9 over) didn’t play a round under par. Adam Hadwin (12 over), Tony Finau (13 over), Tiger Woods (16 over) and Vijay Singh (14 over) all had rounds of 80 or worse. And these five golfers all made the cut.
Who didn’t? Dustin Johnson, Jordan Speith, Justin Thomas, Viktor Hovland, Brian Harman, Sam Burns, Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose and reigning U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark – a popular pre-tournament pick outside of Scheffler.
Many who’d been playing well on the PGA Tour lately got chewed up and spit out by Augusta National.
But not Scheffler.
The hardest, once again, looked easy for him. Nothing wrong with acting like you’ve been there before, especially when you have.
Reach Tennessean sports columnist Gentry Estes at gestes@tennessean.com and on the X platform (formerly known as Twitter) @Gentry_Estes.
According to a Tuesday filing in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Richard Globensky has been charged with transporting millions of dollars worth of Masters merchandise and memorabilia over a 13-year period from 2009-2022 from Augusta National Golf Club in Georgia across state lines to Tampa, Florida, “knowing the same had been stolen, converted and taken by fraud.”
If convicted, Globensky would forfeit any property and cash from proceeds traced to the stolen items. Augusta National has yet to comment on the case.
Last weekend saw Scottie Scheffler win his second Masters in three years by four shots over Ludvig Aberg in the 88th playing of the annual event.
Scheffler’s green jacket tour – the sequel – is officially on and it all started with a pit stop at Inwood Tavern.
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. – A photo of Scottie Scheffler at a popular Dallas dive bar in the wee hours of the morning after winning the 88th edition of the Masters surfaced on social media on Monday. What was Scheffler, who rushed home to be with his pregnant wife Meredith, doing celebrating at a local watering hole?
“So on the plane ride home, I was with my manager Blake and my coach Randy and then I had four of my good buddies with me, and I don’t remember who suggested it, but it seemed like a good idea, and when Meredith picked us up at the airport it still seemed like a good idea, and Meredith was down, so we went for probably 20 minutes and went home,” Scheffler said. “Took a few photos, had a drink and then went home and went to bed.”
Scottie got home and went straight to the iconic dive bar Inwood Tavern to celebrate last night.
Scheffler also explained how he wound up at Inwood Tavern of all places.
“I don’t know if I’d actually been to that place before,” he said. “There was another tavern around the corner that I’d been to a few times and it’s a nice place, but shockingly it wasn’t open Sunday at 1:30 in the morning. This place was open.”
Credit to Meredith for not only picking him up at the airport after 1 a.m. — most wives would’ve said get yourself an Uber! — but willing to go out and celebrate in style until closing time at 2 a.m.
“I think Meredith finished her Heineken Zero and it was like, now we can go,” he said.
Yes, he wore the green jacket to the bar
Scheffler wore the green jacket at the bar and said he’s looking forward to wearing it to some familiar places that he sported the famed jacket in 2022, when he won the Masters for the first time.
“I think right now the way I feel is I want to wear it around the house more,” he said. “But as far as stuff to do with it, I think I’ll probably do something similar. I think I liked going to some of the sporting events in Dallas. The Rangers won the World Series last year, the Mavs are playing some good basketball, Stars are heading into the playoffs, as well, so I’d like to go to some more games. I’ll be home for a few weeks now. Obviously things will be a little bit different with Meredith expecting pretty soon. We’ll see, but hopefully go to a few more sporting events.”
Scheffler’s green jacket tour – the sequel – is officially on and it all started with a pit stop at Inwood Tavern.
“I just pinch myself at times with the kindness people have given me just because I play some golf.”
HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — One day after finishing tied for third at the Masters and cashing a check for more than $1 million, Max Homa had a fan pay for his Chick-fil-A at the drive-thru.
“It was kind,” he said during his pre-tournament press conference at the 2024 RBC Heritage. “I just pinch myself at times with the kindness people have given me just because I play some golf. I feel very fortunate for that.”
Homa drove from Augusta, Georgia, where he shot a final-round 73 to record his best finish at a major. On Sunday night, he celebrated his wife Lacey’s upcoming birthday early and on Monday he made the three-hour drive to Harbour Town Golf Links for this week’s 69-man, no-cut signature event, and stopped along the way for a bite to eat.
“I absolutely demolished Chick-fil-A on my way down,” Homa said. “I was in the drive-thru by myself and I went to order and the person taking the order told me that the woman in the row next to me had paid for whatever I was going to get. She said that her son is 3 or 4 and I’m his favorite golfer, so it was pretty cool. I don’t know, those kinds of things I still pinch myself.”
Homa added that it was the typical busy two-line drive-thru set-up that runs like clockwork. Somehow, she managed to recognize Homa, who climbed into the top 10 in the world (No. 9) with his strong performance at the Masters. That three-way tie for third earned him $1.04 million for his 72-hole total of 4-under 284, matching Collin Morikawa and Tommy Fleetwood.
“She paid for it, I rolled my window down, we chatted for a minute or so, and then I ate it,” Homa said.
Homa deserved a treat after a memorable week. His record in the majors before the Masters was abysmal. It was an important week for the former Cal product to prove to the golf world – and himself – he can perform at golf’s biggest events, too.
“It was fun to wake up for a couple days and think, there’s a pretty decent chance I might be wearing a green jacket on Sunday and to still excel and feel good about my golf,” he said. “It reinforces that my golf game is good enough. I think most anybody who plays a major, it is. But until you get to feel that, you don’t know.”
He added: “Maybe a little bit of the monkey is off the back. I know I can, and the work I’m doing is right. It just comes down to the mental for me. I didn’t change anything about my golf game last week. I just really changed my head and got out of my own way and just played some golf.”
Homa is scheduled to tee on Thursday at 10:50 a.m. ET, in a pairing with Fleetwood.
A picture is worth a thousand words (and 280 characters).
One of the biggest storylines entering this PGA Tour season was Scottie Scheffler’s putting woes.
The world No. 1 had struggled with the flatstick and after last year’s Tour Championship at East Lake talked with his agent, Blake Smith, about seeing a putting coach on the plane ride home. Scheffler has seen PGA Master Professional and putting coach Phil Kenyon work with different types of players over the years and he appreciated his approach.
“As I watched Phil, I could tell that he was open-minded, and that’s the type of people I like to work with,” Scheffler said Sunday after he won his second Masters in three years. “And we kind of hit the ground running in the fall. I can’t speak highly enough of the decision that (swing coach Randy Smith) also made to be open-minded, not take an ego to it, sit there, watch us work, watch Phil do his thing.”
“Phil is also a guy that doesn’t have a big ego. He just wants what’s best for his players,” Scheffler added. “I’m really, really fortunate to have those two guys as part of my team.”
He might not have a big ego but we now know Kenyon keeps receipts. Back in March, a social media troll said “Phil Kenyon is destroying Scottie” in response to a photo of the two working together at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Scheffler went on to win that tournament and then the Players Championship before a T-2 at the Texas Children’s Houston Open and his recent Masters triumph. A month later, Kenyon got the last laugh.
Scottie Scheffler rocked the green jacket at a Dallas dive bar after getting home on Sunday night.
Scottie Scheffler said he was going to try to enjoy his latest victory, a four-shot triumph at the 88th edition of the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, on Sunday.
“I will go home, soak in this victory tonight,” he said during his winner’s press conference after shooting 4-under 68 at Augusta National Golf Club.
Scheffler, who won the green jacket for a second time, did just that. When he got back to Dallas, he paid a visit to the Inwood Tavern to celebrate. Scheffler rocked the green jacket over the outfit he wore in the final round —though he did swap out his hat.
Scottie got home and went straight to the iconic dive bar Inwood Tavern to celebrate last night.
“In my head, all I can think about right now is getting home,” Scheffler said. “I’m not thinking about the tournament. I’m not thinking about the green jacket. I’m trying to answer your questions and I’m trying to get home.
“I wish I could soak this in a little bit more. Maybe I will tonight when I get home.”
Scheffler’s festivities don’t appear to rival the next-level British Open celebration in Ireland that commenced shortly after Shane Lowry won the British Open at Royal Portrush in 2019, but props to Scheffler for soaking in the triumph at one of his hometown’s old-school bars.
First-time participants in majors rarely make much of an impact.
AUGUSTA, Ga. — First-time participants in majors rarely make much of an impact.
They are expected to show up, perhaps make the 36-hole cut and go quietly about their business. To get into contention would be a bonus.
To actually win is virtually unheard of, Ben Curtis and Keegan Bradley being the exceptions. Their victories in the 2003 British Open and 2011 PGA, respectively, were their first starts in major championships.
Frank Urban Zoeller, affectionately known as Fuzzy by his peers, paid little attention to the conventional wisdom at the Masters.
The native of New Albany, Indiana, got into contention in 1979, hung around to the end and won a historic playoff in his first visit to Augusta National Golf Club.
Zoeller joined Horton Smith and Gene Sarazen as the only men to win the Masters in their first attempts. Smith won the inaugural event in 1934, and Sarazen, already one of the game’s established stars, won a year later with his famous double eagle on the 15th hole.
Ed Sneed, who was only slightly better known than Zoeller coming into the 1979 Masters, appeared to be on his way to his first major title. His first three rounds of 68, 67 and 69 put him five shots clear of the field heading into Sunday.
And for 15 holes, Sneed appeared to be a good bet to slip on a green jacket. Despite charges by Jack Nicklaus and Tom Watson, Sneed still had a three-stroke lead with three holes to play.
A three-putt for bogey cost Sneed a shot at the 16th, then he missed a short par putt on the 17th. Suddenly, his lead was down to one.
Sneed hit the fairway on the 18th, but his approach finished next to the greenside bunker. He chipped to about eight feet below the hole, then watched in disbelief as his putt hung on the lip, refusing to drop for par and the win.
Zoeller, meanwhile, had finished with 70 to join Watson and Sneed in the Masters’ first sudden-death playoff.
Like Sarazen 44 years before, Zoeller took a risk on the 15th hole to help force the playoff. He went for the green in two, even though the shot was longer than the distance he normally hit his 3-wood.
“Now, I’ll tell you exactly how far I can hit a 3-wood. I can hit it 235 yards without any wind,” Zoeller later told reporters. “I don’t know how it got there.”
The playoff began on the 10th hole, and all three men made par to advance to the 11th.
Zoeller hit the biggest drive, then watched as Sneed’s approach flew into the back bunker and Watson’s came up wide right. The Masters rookie then calmly hit his iron shot to inside 10 feet.
“Two balls right and don’t leave it short,” was caddie Jariah Beard’s advice for Zoeller, according to Ward Clayton’s book Men on the Bag, which chronicles the stories of Augusta National caddies.
After watching Sneed and Watson play, Zoeller coolly rolled his birdie putt into the cup and earned his place in history. He flung his putter into the air and jumped for joy with outstretched arms.
“I’m on cloud nine, and I guess I’ll be up there for three or four weeks,” Zoeller said afterward.
He had extra motivation for making the birdie to end the playoff on the 11th hole.
“I said if I don’t make it, we have to play No. 12, which I don’t want to do,” Zoeller told the media corps. “I’m 3-over-par there this week.”
Zoeller, who retired from Masters competition in 2009, thinks someone will come along and join him, Smith and Sarazen as Masters winners in their Augusta debut. In 2014, Jordan Spieth almost joined the club after sharing the lead going into the final round.
“You never say never,” Zoeller said. “It is amazing when you think about all the talent that has walked through from that practice range to that first tee and it hasn’t happened.
“Can I explain why? No. Will it happen again? Somebody will do it.”
Wise words from three of the all-time greats, who still care deeply about the state of professional golf.
AUGUSTA, Ga. – Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player and Tom Watson want to see the PGA Tour-LIV Golf dispute get settled.
Speaking during a joint press conference after the three legends hit the ceremonial tee shots to the 88th edition of the Masters, Watson shared a special moment during the Champions Dinner, which brought together 33 of the past winners – seven of them members of LIV – in their Green Jackets and Augusta National Golf Club Chairman Fred Ridley, on Tuesday evening.
“We were sitting down and we were having great stories about Seve Ballesteros and people were laughing and talking. I said to Mr. Ridley, I said, ‘Do you mind if I say something about being here together with everybody?’ He said, ‘Please do.’
“And I got up and I said – I’m looking around the room, and I’m seeing just a wonderful experience everybody is having. They are jovial. They are having a great time. They are laughing. I said, ‘Ain’t it good to be together again?’ ” Watson recalled.
He added that he hoped the players would take it upon themselves to reach a resolution, sooner rather than later.
“We have to do something,” Watson said. “We all know it’s a difficult situation for professional golf right now. The players really kind of have control I think in a sense. What do they want to do? We’ll see where it goes. We don’t have the information or the answers. I don’t think the PGA Tour or the LIV Tour really have an answer right now. But I think in this room, I know the three of us want to get together. We want to get together like we were at that Champions Dinner, happy, the best players playing against each other. The bottom line: that’s what we want in professional golf, and right now, we don’t have it.”
Nicklaus echoed that sentiment and placed his trust in PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan to lead the way.
“The best outcome is the best players play against each other all the time. That’s what I feel about it. And how it’s going, I don’t know, I don’t want to be privy to it,” Nicklaus said. “I talked to Jay not very long ago, and I said, ‘Jay, don’t tell me what’s going on because I don’t want to have to lie to the press and people that ask me questions.’ I said, ‘How are you doing?’ He said, ‘We’re doing fine.’ I said, “OK, that’s all I want to know.’ If Jay thinks we’re doing fine, we’ll get there, I think we’ll get there. And I certainly hope that happens, the sooner the better.”
Player touched on how that division in golf and attention on the greed in the game has turned off the public. But he also noted that the players who had stayed loyal to the PGA Tour needed to be compensated in some way (which they will be through the infusion of capital into the Tour’s new for-profit arm from private equity investment.)
“Anytime in any business whatsoever, not only in the golf business, there’s confrontation, it’s unhealthy. You’ve got to get together and come to a solution. If you cannot, it’s not good. The public don’t like it, and we as professionals don’t like it, either,” Player said. “But it’s a big problem because they paid all these guys to join the LIV Tour fortunes, I mean, beyond one’s comprehension and the players that were loyal, three of us and others. Now these guys come back and play, I really believe the players, that if they are loyal, should be compensated in some way or another. Otherwise, there’s going to be dissension.”
Wise words from three of the all-time greats, who still care deeply about the state of professional golf.
Sergio Garcia is one of 13 players representing LIV Golf this week at the 2024 Masters, and trust us, it’s going to be hard to miss him at Augusta National Golf Club on Thursday.
Garcia, the 2017 Masters champ, debuted his look — which matches with his wife, Angela — on social media before teeing off for the opening round of the year’s first major championship.
There’s a lot we could say about this fit. Is he now sponsored by Starry? Is he attempting some sort of camouflage? Or has he had this outfit laid out in his closet for the last few months?
