Tiger Woods comparisons harder to ignore as Scottie Scheffler strolls to Open title
SCOTTIE TOO HOTTIE: Scottie Scheffler celebrates winning The Open Championship with the Claret Jug. Pic: ©INPHO/Ben Brady
Golf waited 34 years for someone else to complete the Grand Slam after Jack Nicklaus managed it in 1966.
Another 25 yawned between Tigers Wood’s achievement at the start of the millennium and Rory McIlroy’s deliverance at Augusta back in April.
We could well have another inside the next 14 months.
All eyes will be on Scottie Scheffler at Shinnecock Hills next June and his first chance to join the game’s most select club. Two-time Masters champion, winner of the US PGA in May, he has now added the Open Championship to his list of major titles.
He did it on Sunday with all the fuss of a man walking his dog. Nothing about his age, his demeanour, his form or his game suggests he won’t keep doing this. His faith tells him this is what he is supposed to do and how. Unless that changes he will continue to do it.
It’s that simple.
Inevitable was the word Rory McIlroy used to describe the American after Saturday’s third round here and there was a sense of exactly that when the four-shot leader smacked an approach to inside three feet for a birdie at the first hole on Sunday.
Everything after that was just dressing.
Golf loves its hyperbole. And God knows we’ve been here before on the back of majors won in dominating fashion by the latest flavour of the month. Jordan Spieth was supposed to be unstoppable, Bryson DeChambeau was going to transform golf as we knew it.
And McIlroy was the man after his transcendent 2014, remember?
Scheffler may be different. More. The word ‘Tigeresque’ stalked him all week in Northern Ireland. No-one dissented and, as fate would have it, 1,197 days separated his first and fourth majors. Same as Woods. The comparisons are multiplying.
“I still think they're a bit silly,” said Scheffler. “Tiger won, what, 15 majors? This is my fourth. I just got one-fourth of the way there. Tiger stands alone in the game of golf. He was inspirational for me growing up.
“He was a very, very talented guy, and he was a special person to be able to be as good as he was at the game of golf. I don't focus on that kind of stuff. That's not what motivates me. I'm not motivated by winning championships.”
That’s the kind of answer that bled into his opinions on fulfilment and the precedence of family over golf last week, comments that he said on Sunday night had been done a disservice by being truncated into bite-sized clips.
He’s right. They were, but it’s becoming harder to deny his growing status in the game. Shane Lowry played the first two rounds with Scheffler and gushed about how even bad shots didn’t look like bad shots when this guy hit them.
The 2019 Open champion felt that the man from Dallas could birdie every hole across rounds completed in 68 and 64 with little in the way of fancy and that robotic brilliance hardly missed a beat over the weekend that followed.
“If Scottie's feet stayed stable and his swing looked like Adam Scott's we'd be talking about him in the same words as Tiger Woods,” said Lowry. “I just think because it doesn't look so perfect, we don't talk about him like that. He's just incredible to watch.” Scheffler wobbled only briefly on Sunday.
Leading by four starting off, he was three-under for the day through the opening five holes, stealing another march on a chasing group that couldn’t raise any sort of gallop to push his advantage out as far as eight shots at one point.
The one opening came when, after brilliant par saves on the 6th and 7th with 16- and 15-foot putts, he took double bogey at the next after failing to escape a bunker at the first time of asking. Then a birdie at the next shut a door than no-one seemed able to push through.
It never looked like anything other than a procession on a dry and calmed golf course that was eminently gettable. Round of the day went to Bryson DeChambeau who was seven-over on Thursday and then 16-under for the last 54 holes. If only… Scheffler hit four rounds in the 60s and ended on 17-under. It is the tenth straight tournament he has won after leading through three days. Tigerish. Xander Schauffele, the defending champion, said as much too.
Rory McIlroy, DeChambeau, Harris English, Schauffele, Tommy Fleetwood… The list of players who rolled out the plaudits for him even as he was still tightening his grip on the Claret Jug was non-stop. Game recognising game.
“He’s setting a benchmark that we all want to be at,” said DeChambeau.
Scheffler’s metronomic skills don’t excite in the way McIlroy’s do. He doesn’t have the USP of DeChambeau. The magnetism of Woods. And he doesn’t lean into the same level of corporate engagement as so many of his peers at the top of this game.
All this has created a 2D persona franked by his nice but perfunctory acceptance speech on the 18th green here, and it’s that impression which Spieth feels is the reason why this reluctant superstar doesn’t dazzle the way he should.
“It's less the golf swing and maybe more of his personality,” Spieth said of how Scheffler might be underappreciated as a player. “He doesn't care to be a superstar. He's not transcending the game like Tiger did. He's not bringing it to a non-golf audience necessarily.”
Maybe not being bothered by all that is part of the superpower.
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