Farmingdale, NY – Scottie Scheffler went to the ball and the world remained calm.
It was early on Saturday afternoon at Bethpage Black, and after a disappointment Ryder Cup, Scheffler’s moment had finally arrived.
The crowds had gone from loudly to delirium, while the second morning session approached its conclusion, their calls echoing about the 18th amphitheater. Cameron Young and Bryson Dechambeau had rode in the first match of the day, while Europeans had kidnapped convincing victory in each of the second and third matches. Now, the session’s balance was hanged in an important anchor match: Scheffler and Russell Henley, 1- to last against the tangible pairing of Bob Macintyre and Victor Hovland.
As Scheffler stood on his ball on the 18th Street, the day and maybe the cup rested at the top of his fingers. If the world no. 1 could hit him hard, he could even encounter and bypass the pressure again to the Europeans for a comprehensive session or nothing in the afternoon with four balls.
Scheffler withdrew, and almost immediately the ball fired strangely outside to the right, arched up in the air and settling, finally, in the Greenside bunker. Scheffler looked puzzled, and for a good reason: it was the type of short courtyard loss that he could go a year or more without doing in a tour, let alone a moment of importance like this. Hovland followed, stripping his access to the green center. Americans were made, in the match, in the session, and perhaps in the cup. The crowd in large ancestors about 18 issued a collective quarrel.
There are hundreds of ways to distribute European blockage of the first two days in this Ryder Cup. And, if the result comes to the matches of Sunday afternoon bachelors, you can make sure that the Golf public will find his way to all of them. Course configuration. Pairing choices. The order of formats. The order of players within the formats. The captains. Lists. The power of the crowd, location, date, time, place – you name it.
But the best explanation for the unexplained American performance in Bethpage is also simpler: Ryder Cup is about your star players, and through three sessions, Scottie Scheffler is without a victory.
It’s not that Scheffler has played in particular badly. By tidethe strokes obtained dataHe has been the second best player on the American side after Cameron Young. It is just that Scheffler was nowhere near the same megastar that has helped him become the best player of the post-Tiger Woods era. At one point in Friday’s opening procedures, Scheffler had gone 18 consecutive holes without a bird – an extension that would have marked only the second time Scheffler has happened in any competitive environment in the last two months. Add to the calm winds of Bethpage, soft greens and unusually rough, and the appearance of Scheffler is even more a head itch.
An explanation includes his closest historical counterpart: Tiger Woods. Extending Scheffler’s poor results to team game (and more precisely, alternative shot format) brings to mind the Woods wars in Ryder Cup. The cup is probably the only flaw on the fruitful Woods list of tuning on the course: a 13-21-3 career record that underlines its predominance as a tournament player.
Perhaps Scheffler, like Woods, has found chaos Ryder Cup divisive to the Zen state needed to defeat a golf course. Or perhaps his European competitors are the fault: while the afternoon with four balls left on Saturday, Mcilroy, Rahm and Fleetwood were a combined 8-0-1 and displaying the same sunny ability that Scheffler so often exhibits.
Regardless of the eventual result (or the last cause), it will be the job of the future captain of Ryder Cup to understand how and why after the start of Scheffler 0-3-0. In the Rahm-Mcilroy-Fleetwood era, it is hard to see US competitive In a Ryder cup, let alone win one, without Scheffler directing the charge. And while a big bullet in the euro sets the scene for a possible Sunday crowning, it is difficult to find a easier explanation of what went wrong than the winning column near the world no. 1.
