It was dark. No one else was on the driving range. And for a moment, Scottie Scheffler tricked the Golf Channel audience into considering he was playing hard with 18 holes to go on the Masters. Scheffler had just finished a late third round at Augusta National with a one-shot lead. He was working late into the night to fulfill his media obligations and strolled into the realm between the driving range and the practice constructing.
With his coach, Randy Smith, and his caddie, Ted Scott, behind him, Scheffler pulled out a club and hit a couple of shots under the practice range lights. Smith and Scott stared into the phone, whose camera was trained on Scheffler's swing.
“I don't know what they're doing! He hit a bad shot this week. He hit the ball beautifully! They can't work on anything,” Paul McGinley said in Irish despair as he and Brandel Chamblee watched throughout the Golf Channel's “Live From” broadcast.
That's the purpose: They didn't work on anything. “We were arguing with Brandel and (Paul McGinley) up there in the locker room,” Smith said.
They were passing the time while Scheffler waited for a massage appointment, and Smith and Scott, across the range, saw the red light on the “Live From” set flashing and decided to have some fun. “Hey, Scottie, pretend you're swinging.”
“Ted pulls out his phone,” Smith recalled. “We're looking at the phone. They think we're looking at his swings. We're not. We're looking at a video of Desi Arnaz and Lucy!”
Because right away, Scottie Scheffler doesn't need to do much. He won the Masters in April, his second green jacket. The following week, he won again at Hilton Head, his fourth win in five starts. Two months later, he won the Travelers Championship on Sunday, his sixth win in ten starts. He suddenly became the primary player since Arnold Palmer in 1962 to win six tournaments before July.
This season could already be described as the most effective PGA Tour season in a few decade. Scheffler has had the most effective three-year streak of ball-striking since Tiger Woods' heyday. The superlatives are well documented. But now Scheffler's streak can be being considered the most effective season of all time.
Scottie throws the ball close and Tom Kim finds the bunker at the primary playoff hole. pic.twitter.com/HT0CJj5TgE
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) 23 June 2024
In the PGA Tour era, when there was still an actual organized tour (just about starting within the Seventies), all of us know the way much Woods won: He had six different seasons with six or more wins. The record for PGA Tour wins in a season is nine – Woods in 2000 and Vijay Singh in 2004. Only two other players even reached that modern six-win club: Tom Watson in 1980 and Nick Price in 1994.
So what’s the main focus of Scheffler's campaign? And how far can we go?
There is context for lots of the others. Singh's 2004 season is indeed the most effective ever. He won nine times, including the PGA Championship, and had 18 top-10 finishes. But the season had a unique, longer format then, with the Tour Championship in November. Singh's fourth win got here in his twenty second start and his ninth in his thirtieth. Scheffler is unlikely to begin again after the Tour Championship in August and will make 20 starts all season. That doesn't diminish Singh's achievement. It's just different.
Unless Scheffler wins a Grand Slam sooner or later, nobody will catch Tiger Woods' 2000s (3 majors, 9 wins). That's in a category of its own. And to make a comparison, we won't trouble to take a look at the incredible seasons from the pre-modern era, like Byron Nelson's 1945 (18 wins, including a significant!) or Bobby Jones' 1930 (all 4 majors).
If Scheffler doesn't win again, this season will likely go down as one in every of the highest 10 years of all time. In terms of wins, it will be behind Tiger's two or three best years, Jordan Spieth's breakthrough in 2015 (five wins, two majors), in addition to Singh, Nicklaus (1972) and Palmer (1960, 1962).
But when you consider it like that, you overlook two things.
First, golf just isn’t a zero-sum game. It would discount the seven other top-10 finishes in nine starts that weren’t wins, or the one time he has finished worse than seventeenth all 12 months. It would discount the incontrovertible fact that he crashed right into a police automotive and was arrested hours before his tee time Friday on the PGA Championship and still finished eighth. It would also discount overall stroke-for-stroke superiority, with DataGolf rating Scheffler's 2024 form because the second-best season since stroke counting began (the last 30 years). He is gaining 3.1 strokes in comparison with the sector. Only Woods' peak in 2000 was higher.
The significance of Scheffler's victories can be ignored. All six of his victories were major events. He won the Masters, the Players Championship and 4 other major events against all the highest stars of the PGA Tour. These took place on courses comparable to Augusta, Sawgrass, Bay Hill and Muirfield Village, a few of the most effective on the planet.
Yes, it's price noting that Scheffler is playing on a PGA Tour without Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith, who’ve moved to LIV, but those stars have also combined for only one win on LIV this season.
Scottie Scheffler's son Bennett is six weeks old and has participated in two trophy celebrations. (Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
Second, Scheffler’s season just isn’t over yet.
So what's next? Scheffler will likely take the subsequent two weeks off before heading to Scotland for the Open Championship. After his win on Sunday, he hinted he wouldn't play within the Scottish Open the week before, but that's unclear. Then he'll head to Paris for the Olympics on Aug. 1. That wouldn't count as a PGA Tour win, but in a packed Olympic field with just about the entire top players (except DeChambeau), an Olympic gold medal would realistically be somewhere between a significant and a significant PGA Tour event. Then Scheffler has three FedEx Cup playoff events in August to shut out the 12 months.
That leaves Scheffler with potentially just 4 official tournaments and yet another significant probability on the Olympics, and he can be the favourite in each of them.
Maybe it is going to take a second major on the Open Championships at Royal Troon to actually put this season in the all-time category. That's fair. It can be odd for a player who’s up to now ahead of the sector week after week to win only one major. The sad truth is that major championships are so difficult. But if he can get to seven (or more) wins with two majors, there can be serious debate about whether that is the second-best season ever.
If Scheffler doesn't win the Open but has seven or eight wins overall, he’ll move further into the highest five. It can be a matter of private preference
This is all just barroom fun. It's not real. These are all just ways to step back and ensure that we appreciate the incontrovertible fact that we're experiencing something great. Scheffler isn't just having his best season in a decade. He's had 12 wins and 36 top-five finishes over three years. He's special. Enjoy it.
image credit : www.nytimes.com