Golf has a new tyrant and his name is Scottie Scheffler. He is not Tiger Woods, he will never be Tiger Woods, but his mastery of the game and his results in 2024 make him the closest thing to the Tiger that this sport has seen since the era of hegemony of the winner of 15 majors. It has been Scheffler’s year, undisputed number one in the world and winner of eight tournaments, including the Augusta Masters, in addition to Olympic gold at the Paris Games. The superiority of the 28-year-old American has been overwhelming, a gap with the rest of the competitors on the American circuit that has widened after the departure of Jon Rahm, a rival who could look him in the eye, to LIV, the Saudi League.
Scheffler’s collection of trophies in recent months is breathtaking: Arnold Palmer, The Players, Masters, RBC Heritage, Memorial Tournament, Travelers, Tour Championship and Hero World Challenge. There are eight wins and 17 rankings among the top 10 in the 20 tournaments played on the PGA Tour. As a tie, Olympic glory and the Presidents Cup title with the United States. It is the first time that a golfer has won at least seven victories in a season since 2007… of course, Tiger Woods. And not even the great legend of golf achieved the statistical record that Scheffler has just set: his average strokes this year on the circuit has been 68.01 per round, the lowest figure in history (the data has been compiled since 1987 ). There are three consecutive courses falling below 69 strokes, something never seen before. Woods has lowered that record four times in his imperial career, but he has never linked three in a row.
The second in the classification has been Xander Schauffele (68.52), and Rahm scored an average of 68.81 strokes in 2020 and 68.82 in 2023, his best performances. No one except Scheffler has been so close to breaking the unimaginable barrier of 68. And this brand has not taken the Olympic Games into account (if it did, the American would already be at 67).
“I just try to compete and win,” summarizes the protagonist, a very religious man who thanks God for his talent, “but that doesn’t change me as a person when I return home. If I started taking my trophies and walking around in style, my wife would slap me. Winning golf tournaments doesn’t make me different. I try not to give too much importance to the results, good or bad.”
The point is that in Scheffler’s case these results are not good or bad, but good or very good. His golf barely shows any cracks. He hits it straight from the teedespite that strange and anti-academic foot dance in the blows when he uses the driversfrom the street adjusts with surgeon precision in its approaches to the flag, when it manufactures abundant options of birdieand it is in the puttespecially at shorter distances, where there is greater room for improvement. Hence, in the first tournament of the new season, the Hero World Challenge at the beginning of this December, he debuted a pincer grip for putts under five meters after training it with his greens technician, Phil Kenyon. The invention worked and Scheffler picked up where he left off, winning again, with -25 and six strokes ahead of Tom Kim. The tournament organizer, who was none other than Tiger Woods, presented him with the trophy in a symbolic transfer of power. From king to king.
Jorge Campillo, the only Spaniard with the American circuit card this year, surrenders like everyone else to the champion. “I played with him at Royal Liverpool, a training day at the British Open. Very nice. I played pretty well, and he was asking me, but the guy didn’t miss a shot. He hits it long off the tee and the ball comes straight out without any spin, and from the fairway he sends it almost into the hole. And they say he doesn’t kick well! If he putt like Tiger in his best days, who didn’t miss a putt from two meters below, he would still win 12 tournaments a year. His season is spectacular. I don’t see him as good as Tiger, yes, but he is a phenomenon. Mentally he seems calm and handles situations well. It’s true that he misses so little, gets into so little trouble playing golf, that he doesn’t even need to be that strong in his head.”
The golf-playing and winning machine that Scheffler has become, however, has a mole: the big ones. There are two Masters in the backpack, 2022 and 2024, in addition to 10 rankings among the top 10, a bite that seems small for his level of play in recent seasons. This course won at Augusta and experienced a surreal episode during the PGA Championship. The number one, who had just become the father of his first child, a boy named Bennett, was arrested before the second day for skipping a traffic stop and confronting officers while trying to get to the field in the middle of a storm. The American was handcuffed, detained and booked by Kentucky police, and arrived just in time to go out to compete. The episode would have distracted anyone, but not him, in the fight for the title until the end.
The Jack Nicklaus award for the best player on the American circuit has ended up in the same hands in the last three editions. Who was the only one to achieve it before? Tiger. Scottie Scheffler surpasses Woods in the record for earnings in a course, the 29 million dollars he has amassed this campaign, a surge driven by the increase in prizes on the PGA Tour after the economic war with LIV. And he is already the fifth golfer in history with the most weeks on the world throne (119), close to reaching Rory McIlroy (122) and behind Dustin Johnson (135), Greg Norman (331) and the legend Tiger (683 ).
Scheffler and Woods’ paths continue to cross. This year he was playing at Riviera when after hitting a ball a fan yelled: “Congratulations on being number one, Scottie. You only have 11 more years to be like Tiger!” Scheffler rejects the comparison, although he takes up the challenge: “Tiger is unique. We all idolize him, he has been our reference. What he did over the years is crazy. Every time I am compared to him it is very special. I have 13 grand left to match him, so I think I’m going to stick to my routine, follow my plan and stay balanced.” He already says it: he is not Tiger, but he is the closest thing.
