The Ryder Cup teammates won the 2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans at TPC Louisiana in Avondale on Sunday after a one-hole playoff against Chad Ramey and Martin Trainer. The win is the 25th of McIlroy’s career and third of Lowry’s on the PGA Tour.
McIlroy and Lowry will each bank $1,286,050, while Ramey and Trainer will earn $525,100 as a consolation prize. Ryan Brehm and Mark Hubbard finished a shot back in third and will take home $343,763 a piece.
With $8.9 million up for grabs, check out how much money each PGA Tour player earned this week at the 2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans.
The 27-year-old won the 2024 RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, on Monday after play was suspended for two-and-a-half hours on Sunday due to inclement weather and then later for darkness. The win is the world No. 1’s fourth in his last five starts and 10th of his PGA Tour career.
Last week Scheffler won $3.6 million at the Masters and he earned another $3.6 million for his win this week in the PGA Tour’s latest big-money signature event. Sahith Theegala, who finished three shots back in second, banked a hefty $2.18 million for his runner-up showing. Patrick Cantlay and Wyndham Clark, who finished T-3 at 15 under, each banked $1.18 million.
With $20 million up for grabs, check out how much money each PGA Tour player earned this week at the 2024 RBC Heritage in Hilton Head.
The world No. 1 has now won in four of his last five starts.
Scottie Scheffler spent an extra night in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, which typically wouldn’t be such a drag if not for his wife Meredith being pregnant back home in Dallas and awaiting the couple’s first child later this month.
But Mother Nature had other plans, forcing Scheffler to return to Harbour Town Golf Links on Monday morning to play his final three holes of the 2024 RBC Heritage and wrap up his fourth PGA Tour title in his past five starts.
One week and one day after Scheffler slipped into the famed Green Jacket awarded to the Masters champ for the second time in three years, the 27-year-old Texan added another colorful jacket – this time in trademark Tartan – to his closet and became the first reigning Masters champion to win the RBC Heritage since Bernhard Langer in 1985.
Scheffler, who was 4-under through 15 holes in the final round and 20-under overall when play was suspended due to darkness on Sunday, made two pars and a finishing bogey and signed for a 3-under 68 on Monday, three shots better than Sahith Theegala (68) and four better than reigning U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark (65) and past FedEx Cup champion Patrick Cantlay (68). Scheffler banked another $3.6 million to surpass $18 million in earnings this season – and it’s still April.
“I didn’t show up here just to have some sort of ceremony and have people tell me congratulations,” said Scheffler of avoiding a post-Masters victory hangover. “I came here with a purpose.”
CBS Sports roving reporter Colt Knost, who grew up with Scheffler following him around Dallas’s Royal Oaks Golf Club, already has one of the best nicknames in golf: The Big Gravy. But he may have earned another one – Knost-radamus – for a prediction seemingly as accurate as those of the 16th century French astrologer Nostradamus. In February 2022, when Scheffler won his first Tour title at the WM Phoenix Open, Knost proclaimed him to be “a worldbeater,” and added, “Now that he’s got that first one, I think the floodgates are going to open for him.”
Scheffler’s latest triumph is his 10th career title, the first player to win that many times (or more) in three seasons since Dustin Johnson did so between 2015-16 and 2017-18. There’s no indication that this flood of success for the world No. 1 will stop any time soon. Did Knost imagine Scheffler would dominate on the PGA Tour? “I really did,” he said. “He never plays badly and he’s one of the most competitive people I’ve ever met. He will never just go through the motions.”
Theegala, who recalled playing against Scheffler for the first time in the Starburst Junior Golf Classic at Waco, Texas, didn’t remember ever beating Scheffler, who is a year older than him, in a single junior tournament. Competing with Scheffler, who leads the Tour in 30 statistical categories this season, hasn’t gotten any easier lately. “It’s pretty epic,” Theegala said of Scheffler, who has shot even par or better in all 40 rounds this season and became the first player to win four times in five starts since Tiger Woods in 2007-08. “I was talking to Carl, my caddie, walking to 15 tee box. I was like, I grew up watching the end of Tiger, got to see Rory, DJ, Jordan, like all these guys kind of dominate for a period of time, and I was like, we could be in the midst of something really, really special.”
Some observers suggested that Scheffler would skip the RBC Heritage but Scheffler said he never wavered in his commitment to the tournament. After winning the Masters, Scheffler flew home to Dallas to be with Meredith and didn’t show up to Hilton Head until Tuesday. He played only a nine-hole practice round on Wednesday and spotted much of the field a head start, shanking a bunker shot at his third hole in the first round, making double bogey and needing two late birdies to post 69. He trailed by six and complained of fatigue. But after recharging his batteries, he didn’t make a single bogey or worse until the 72nd hole of the tournament, and even in that case Scheffler said he was counting that one as a par as he played the smart shots with a comfortable lead. He stormed back with a 65 on Friday and was lurking three back before reminding everyone who is boss with a bogey-free 63 to claim a one-stroke lead.
In the final round, Scheffler laid down the hammer early, chipping in at the par-5 second hole from 53 feet for eagle. His bump-and-run, executed to perfection, marked his 11th hole-out of the season. He tacked on a birdie at the par-5 fifth and strung together six consecutive pars before the horn blew. When play resumed he wedged to 6 feet for another birdie at 13. When he made his lone blunder, pull-hooking a 4-iron into the water due to mud on his ball at the par-5 15th, he took a penalty drop and carved a beautiful shot to 11 feet. Darkness had fallen and he could’ve wait until Monday to strike the par putt but he opted to play on and sank it for good measure. While that snapped a streak of 53 consecutive holes without recording a score of more than a four on his card, dating to the 15th hole in his first round, he pumped his fist with glee for keeping a clean card (to that point).
“I felt like I was due for one to drop,” said Scheffler, whose closing bogey gave him a winning total 19-under 265. “So I figured might as well hit it now.”
Clark mounted an early charge, making an eagle and six birdies in his first 11 holes to inch within a stroke of the lead. But his effort to run down Scheffler was spoiled at the 12th hole when Clark tried to punch between trees. His ball struck one of them squarely and ricocheted out of bounds. He made double bogey.
“It was kind of fun for a little bit,” said Clark, who improved to a career-best ranking of No. 3 in the world. “Seemed like maybe we had a chance to do something crazy.”
Only Mother Nature could prolong Scheffler’s victory another day. Play was suspended due to inclement weather at 4:28 p.m. ET, for two hours and 32 minutes. The delay meant they ran out of daylight.
But on Monday, Scheffler capped off winning for the fourth time this year, all of them Signature events. He finished tied for second in the only tournament he did not win during his scorching run. For the week, he topped the field of 69 in Strokes Gained: Off the Tee, SG: Tee to Green, SG: Approach the Green and scrambling.
“We’re watching greatness right now,” CBS’s Jim Nantz said. “It doesn’t happen all the time, but it sure is fun when you find yourself witnessing something like this.
Nantz’s NFL broadcast partner, former Dallas Cowboys QB Tony Romo, who played in the Invited Celebrity Classic on PGA Tour Champions last week, estimated he’s played around 500 rounds with Scheffler and said he’s never failed to break 70.
“Which is insane,” said Romo who played with him the week before the Masters at Brook Hollow, a Dallas club. “I have not seen a guy hit a golf ball like this since Tiger back in the 2000s when I played with him, the way he was striking the ball, the compression, the trajectory, the spin rate. It was impressive, and I was like, ‘He ain’t losing that tournament.’ ”
No one stopped him at the RBC Heritage either. Could Scheffler be on his way to a season for the record books? That may depend whether history repeats itself — all 10 of his wins have come in the months of February, March and April. So, time will tell if Scheffler can continue to dominate when the calendar flips to May – just don’t bet against the floodgates closing any time soon.
The Tour had reasons for staying pat and hoping for a 6 o’clock finish but it gambled and lost.
Why didn’t the PGA Tour move up tee times for the final round of the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina?
It was a fair question when a late-afternoon storm forced play to be suspended for more than 2 ½ hours and prevented the completion of the Signature event on Sunday at Harbour Town Golf Links. After all, the Tour’s published weather forecast called for an 80 percent chance of rain around 4 p.m. ET and a 40 percent chance of lightning.
So, why didn’t the Tour act accordingly when it considered the weather report of Stewart Williams, who has been a meteorologist for the Tour for more than 25 years? Gary Young, the PGA Tour’s Senior Vice President Rules & Competitions, did his best to explain during a post-round briefing with the media.
“The timing of it yesterday afternoon when we were making the decision, we had a 30 percent chance of thunderstorms. We did have a 70 to 80 percent chance of rain, but we were only looking at about four tenths of an inch that he was predicting, anywhere from four tenths to six tenths of an inch. The golf course was really very dry. We felt that could handle it easily. It actually held up very well through the rain that we got, but it was really the thunder and lightning that put us down,” Young said.
Play was suspended at 4:28 p.m. ET with the leaders on the 11th hole at the Pete Dye-designed Harbour Town layout. The threat of lightning kept the golfers from resuming until 7 pm., a delay of 2 hours, 32 minutes. Play was suspended for good due to darkness at 7:45 p.m.
“We did not expect that,” Young said of the lightning in the area. “Our meteorologist Stewart Williams felt that the front would be to our south when we came in in the morning, so we would be on the cooler side of the front, and it would keep the probability of thunderstorms down quite a bit.
“Unfortunately when we arrived this morning, the front had stalled to our north, which kept us on the warmer side and allowed for the temperatures to warm up, and of course late in the day we saw the thunderstorms develop.”
The decision likely was further complicated because an early finish is a killer for TV ratings. Viewers tend to be less interested in watching a sporting event if they already know the result. Final-round network coverage was scheduled from 3-6 p.m. on CBS.
RBC, which also sponsors the Tour stop in Canada, is currently negotiating a renewal of its contract with the Tour beyond this year and the Tour likely wanted to help its cause with the option most likely to generate the best ratings. In short, the Tour had reasons for staying pat and hoping for a 6 p.m. ET finish but it gambled and lost. This marks the second unscheduled Monday finish on the Tour this season and first since the Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches last month.
The final round of the RBC Heritage will resume on Monday at 8 a.m. ET with nine players from the field of 69 needing to return to the course.
The final round was suspended due to inclement weather for two hours and thirty minutes on Sunday afternoon.
The last thing you want to hear is the horn on the golf course, but that’s precisely what fans at the 2024 RBC Heritage heard on Sunday. Twice.
The final round play at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina was suspended due to inclement weather at 4:28 p.m. ET. The final group featuring tournament leader Scottie Scheffler was in the fairway on the 11th hole when play was called.
On the CBS broadcast, the Tour’s Senior Director, TV rules and review analyst Mark Dusbabek made it clear that play was called due to lightning in the area and not because of the heavy rains that were falling. At 6:30 p.m. ET the final update came that play would resume at 7 p.m. ET, ending a two-and-a-half-hour delay. Less than an hour later at 7:47 p.m. ET the horn sounded to call play for the day due to darkness.
Nine players will return to the course at 8 a.m. ET Monday morning to finish he tournament. Scottie Scheffler, who has won three of his last four starts, holds a five-shot lead with three holes to play.
Scheffler is doing some weird and wild stuff on the golf course these days.
Scottie Scheffler is doing some weird and wild stuff on the golf course these days.
During the third round of the RBC Heritage in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina on Saturday, he hit 15 of 18 greens in regulation and shot 8-under 63. Over the last three seasons, he has the most bogey-free rounds, most rounds with 7-plus birdies-or-better and most rounds hitting 15-plus greens in regulation.
That’s just a sampling of his mind-boggling brilliance, which includes victory at the Masters last week, two more wins and a T-2 in his last four starts. Scheffler may be headed for another W on Sunday. But to hear Justin Thomas tell it, the weirdest part of Scheffler’s heater may be that he’s doing it using high-numbered golf balls.
“Does anyone else think it’s weird that Scottie uses high numbers? I don’t know if I’ve ever seen an elite player use high golf balls,” Thomas, who joined the CBS broadcast after Saturday’s third round, asked.
CBS’s Amanda Balionis cut in to say: “Dottie, you have someone else in your lane for this.”
“It’s true,” Pepper, a 17-time winner on the LPGA Tour, said. “He used a seven (Friday) and a six (Saturday).”
“It’s wild,” Thomas said. “I’ve been going about this wrong my whole life.”
CBS’s Trevor Immelman asked Thomas what number he uses. “Anything but fours,” said Thomas.
Why no fours? “I don’t know,” Thomas said. “You know golfers, we’re just ridiculously superstitious. I think I had a couple bad holes or rounds and that was all she wrote.”
According to a Golf Digest story, Scheffler started using balls marked with Nos. 5-8 “because it’s easier to identify,” he said. “I’ve just hit the wrong ball a few too many times.” Scheffler recently recounted to Golfweek’s Cameron Jourdan about one of those times he played Beau Hossler’s ball in college.
Count Ben Crenshaw among the pros who wouldn’t play a ball numbered higher than four – that’s the highest score he wanted to make on any hole. Ernie Els was known to change golf balls after a birdie – he believed that a ball only had one birdie in it. But Scheffler seems immune to the number game.
“Not weird at all,” CBS’s Dottie Pepper wrote on X on Sunday. “Just doesn’t seem to have the superstitions many athletes/golfers have. Scottie’s golf balls – regardless of the numbers – are finding the (the) hole faster than anyone else’s!”
Indeed, they are.
Not weird at all; just doesn’t seem to have the superstitions many athletes/golfers have. Scottie’s golf balls—regardless of the number— are finding hole faster than anyone else’s! https://t.co/4y5nRa8k0N
The purse at the RBC Heritage is $20 million with $3.6 million going to the winner.
Surprise, surprise, Scottie Scheffler is once again leading a PGA Tour event. After 54 holes of the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head, South Carolina, the world’s best player holds a one-shot lead over Austrian Sepp Straka at 16 under.
Collin Morikawa, looking to return to his winning ways, is two back of Scheffler at 14 under. Ludvig Aberg (13 under), Sahith Theegala (13 under), Patrick Cantlay (12 under), Xander Schauffele (10 under) and Rory McIlroy (10 under) are all still in the mix.
The purse at the RBC Heritage is $20 million with $3.6 million going to the winner. The winner will also receive 700 FedEx Cup points.
There’s another important Scottie at Harbour Town this week.
Another week, another signature event on the PGA Tour.
The first round of the 2024 RBC Heritage is in the books, and numerous players took advantage of softer conditions at Harbour Town Golf Links in Hilton Head Island, South Carolina, meaning birdies were aplenty on Thursday.
J.T. Poston holds the solo lead, and he has Scottie (no, not that one) to thank. Meanwhile, the Masters champion got off to a slow-ish start, but he finished strong after grinding through the middle of his round.
And in between, there are plenty of players crowding the top of the leaderboard with no major separation after 18 holes of play.
Here’s what you need to know from the opening round of the 2024 RBC Heritage:
There’s another important Scottie at Harbour Town this week. Katherine “Scottie” Poston, J.T. Poston’s daughter, who was born March 20, is with Poston for the first time since she was born. Along with wife Kelly, the Postons are off to a great start on Hilton Head Island.
Poston opened in 8-under 63 on Thursday to take the solo lead at the RBC Heritage. The 63 is the fifth time Poston has opened in 63 during a Tour event since the 2016-17 season, tied with Jordan Spieth for the most during that span. He had nine birdies and a lone blemish on the card to complete a stellar opening round.
“Maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe she’s a good luck charm,” Poston said of his daughter. “It’s been great. It’s definitely an adjustment. I think my wife and I were figuring it out. My mom is here. She’s helping us out, too. So we’ve got plenty of help. We’re just kind of figuring it out. But it’s good to have them here and sort of takes away the pressure of — I’m not worrying about golf when I’m at home. I’m trying to change diapers and take care of her.”
In the last five years at the RBC Heritage, Poston has finished in the top 10 three times while missing the cut in 2021 and 2023.
His 8-under start has opened up a two-shot lead on Seamus Power and Collin Morikawa.
He said the tournament is one he has circled on the calendar at the beginning of every year because he enjoys Harbour Town so much. Even with the extra responsibilities off the course, Poston is focused on playing strong golf on it. And he had no issues with that Thursday.
“My wife has been great,” Poston said, “She knows this is just how it is. We have to spend some time on the golf course. I’ve got to work on my game. I’ve got to stay sharp. She’s been awesome giving me the time to do that, and I’m not taking it for granted. I’m trying to be productive and get back home when I can help.”
As Austin Eckroat explains it, he was struggling with “everything” last week at Augusta National, resulting in him missing the cut.
“I came off a really good stretch, and all of a sudden I couldn’t hit the golf ball,” he said. “It’s never far away from good golf, but it’s also — you’re never that far away from struggling a little bit.”
Eckroat didn’t touch a golf club on the weekend, instead taking a spot outside the ropes as a patron on Saturday at Augusta National to get away a bit and have a different experience.
And it paid off. Eckroat’s refocused approach resulted in an opening 5-under 66 on Thursday. The winner of the Cognizant Classic earlier this season had six birdies and a lone bogey, and he said his weekend refresh contributed to the quick start.
“It was honestly a really enjoyable weekend to go and watch the Masters,” Eckroat said. “I had never done it and tried to take some notes on some guys playing well. Sunday I watched at home and then ended up driving over here and took it easy.
“I went and watched Amen Corner. That was a really cool area. I wanted to see Tiger at least hit one shot, so I watched Tiger hit his tee ball on 10 and then I just hung out on 13. We had a good spot where we could see the second shots, and it was a really cool spot.”
Theegala wants to play every week on the PGA Tour. It irritates him when he’s off because he still watches golf on TV and wonders why he isn’t in the field. But he knows that’s not possible.
He went into this year with a goal of building a smarter schedule to handle the signature events and majors better. And thus far, he feels as if it is paying off.
Theegala is in the group of players at 5 under and three back of Poston. He fired a bogey-free 66 on Thursday coming off a T-45 at the Masters last week.
“I haven’t played quite as much, and my body is thanking me,” Theegala said. “I feel like I have more energy for the bigger events, which is awesome. It’s really worked out well at the start of the year.
“I joke with my buddies all the time. I would always say I’m playing every event I get into, half-jokingly, but I was like, I’m not missing a Tour event. We’ve grinded our whole lives to get here and now I’m just going to be skipping a bunch of events. It feels weird to take it off, but I see the benefit in doing so. That’s probably been the number one answer when I’ve asked guys that have played out here for a long time, what’s their secret to the longevity. It’s really not pushing it.”
Scottie Scheffler and Jordan Spieth were paired together for the first round of the RBC Heritage, and through five holes, Spieth was 4 under and Scheffler was 1 over. By day’s end, Scheffler nicked his fellow Longhorn and Dallas resident by a shot.
Scheffler’s incredible consistency again showed Thursday, as he opened in 2-under 69, just four days removed from his second Masters victory. Scheffler didn’t get to Harbour Town until later in the week and played only nine holes on the back side during the pro-am portion of his warm-up. Yet even after an early shank on a bunker shot that resulted in a double, Scheffler settled in and birdied Nos. 16-17 to card 2 under.
“It would have felt better if I got off to a better start, but I tried to give myself a little bit of grace there, but I got pretty frustrated towards the middle of the round because I was playing good, felt like I was hitting good putts, and my speed was maybe a touch off,” Scheffler said. “I think I was maybe too settled down to start the day. I wasn’t quite into the competition. I think maybe it was a bit of fatigue, whatever it was. But I felt like I was still kind of getting adjusted to the golf course.”
Scheffler made birdie on the par-5 second before the double on the third. He carded the second of his four birdies on the par-3 seventh and then had eight straight pars before his consecutive birdies.
In his last four starts, Scheffler has three wins and a T-2. And in that T-2, Scheffler was a couple putts away from forcing a playoff or even winning outright. He mentioned he didn’t get as much work in on the greens at Harbour Town this week, but who can blame him? He has plenty of things going on in his life, including his first child being born in the coming weeks, as well.
“I think sometimes that frustration from not playing my best I think kind of helps me focus sometimes,” Scheffler said. “You can use that as good energy and you can use that as bad energy, so I tried to use it as best I could for the good stuff today.”
Up until last week, Collin Morikawa was searching for his game. Yet for the second straight week, he looks like the player who won two major championships.
Morikawa is two shots back after an opening 65 that included seven birdies and one bogey. And a week after a T-3 at the Masters, Morikawa is in great position after the opening 18 holes at Harbour Town.
“Especially the way I’ve been playing, you never know how it’s going to be. But when you find this little rhythm and you find this kind of — just pathway, just to play golf, it’s very simple. Sometimes when you’re playing bad, you look back and you wonder why it can’t be that simple.”
The purse at the RBC Heritage is $20 million with $3.6 million going to the winner.
Don’t blink, you’ll miss another birdie in Hilton Head Island.
The first round of the 2024 RBC Heritage at Harbour Town Golf Links has come and gone but not without myriad birdies and plenty of low scores on Thursday in South Carolina. It’s J.T. Poston on top of the leaderboard after an 8-under 63. He has a two-shot lead on Seamus Power and Collin Morikawa.
Masters champion Scottie Scheffler shot 2-under 69 in his first round since sliding the green jacket back on.
The purse at the RBC Heritage is $20 million with $3.6 million going to the winner. The winner will also receive 700 FedEx Cup points.
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.
