Scottie Scheffler is your champion player of the year – and he left no doubt.
Entering Sunday in RoyalScheffler held a four -stroke lead to Haotong Li, his closest competitor, with Matthew Fitzpatrick another stroke. Quartet of Rory McilroyTyrrell Hatton, Chris Gotterup And Harris English were the only other players within six of the world no. 1. The ban on a historical collapse, the second big title of Scheffler’s season was all but secured.
NBC analyst Kevin Kisner set best when talking further Pour Saturday evening: “(He is) just not the boy you want to follow.”
And it took everyone a hole on Sunday for Scheffler to remind everyone why. Despite faced one of the most nervous opening shooting across the golf with the borders falling both sides of the road, Scheffler kept his ball in the game out and then hit his access inside the interval. Birdie.
The road was officially lit.
Scheffler rejected the next two holes and then made birds back-back at no. 4 and 5 to reach 17 under. His closest competition was six strokes back. The question was no longer left whether Scheffler would require south Claret. The only mystery was how big the last margin would be.
Sadly, even in the midst of one of his biggest triumphs, Scheffler displayed a brief moment of mortality. In the eighth par-4 hole, he found a street bunker and was unable to escape in his first test. After finding the short grass, he lost his green and could not rise up and down for Bogey.
6 in the score card would be his single deficiency of the day. For the rest of the round, Scheffler was almost perfect. He did nothing spectacular, but with two birds and two pairs, he posted a Ho-Hum Sunday.
Scheffler 267’s four-day total was four better than English, which ended only in second place. Gotterup, the winner of the Scottish Open last week, ended another third solo blow, while Wyndham Clark, Fitzpatrick and Li rounded the first five.
There can never be another player who dominated the game as Tiger Woods did in the early 2000s, but Scheffler is certainly making his best counterfeiting. Advanced analytics illustrates as much as Scheffler’s strokes gained from statistics only becoming better than those of Woods themselves.
“Seeing Tiger playing in his prime minister-and I think Tiger is the greatest player I have ever seen-I never thought in my life, I would see a player as close to Tiger as this man is currently,” NBC analyst Jim Bones Mackay said. “Scottie Scheffler simply blows my mind whenever I see it playing.”
And if you are not yet convinced, consider this: it was 1,197 days between Woods winning his first major title and winning his fourth. Scheffler’s victory in Royal Portrush comes exactly 1,197 days since his triumph in 2022 masters, his first first. With the victory, Scheffler has now won 17 tournaments, four major, two player championships and a gold medal over the past three seasons.