Scottie Scheffler takes a break from the range before Wednesday’s practice round leading up to the U.S. Open at Pinehurst.
Gregory Shamus, Getty Images
PINEHURST, NORTH CAROLINA | At Augusta National Golf Club, journalists conduct their formal interviews during the Masters in a room some way from the course. It is well-lit, tiered and air-conditioned. The furniture is dark brown and somber. Each seat has its microphone. As everywhere at Augusta, the dominant color is green. In this room three years ago, Scottie Scheffler was being interviewed. He was not the man of the moment as he is now. We knew a lot about his golf but little about his personality, so one pesky journalist asked: “Scottie, when I get back to the U.K., people will say to me, ‘What’s Scottie Scheffler like?’ What do I tell them?” Scheffler hemmed and hawed. He looked uncomfortable. “What do you mean?” he said. The questioner repeated himself: “What are you like? How would you describe yourself?” “I don’t know,” Scheffler replied. “You’d better ask my friends.” Clearly, he found the question uncomfortable. Happy to talk about his golf, he was too modest to talk about his character. The Scheffler of June 2024, 38 months later, knows who he is all right. He is arrow-straight and completely without artifice, the same from midday to midnight. To question whether Scottie Scheffler is his own man is as silly as asking if the sun rises in the east. Scheffler’s twin virtues of self-certainty and plain decency support the rest of his character as his legs support his body. They are a large part of why he is ranked No. 1 in the world by some distance. His playing record for 2024 reads like a rugby team’s: 13 games, won five. He has won three of his past five events, four of his past seven and five of his past eight. These remarkable statistics generate an irresistible idea: He is a man in form, perhaps in the form of his life, the man to beat at Pinehurst.
“It’s his relentlessness [that is so impressive],” Rory McIlroy said. “Look, a lot of stuff went on in his life. They’ve just had a new child. He’s been through some struggles in his game, particularly with the putter, that he’s been able to turn around. But yeah, I mean, the word that I describe it as is relentless. It seems like every time he shows up, he is the guy to beat, and deservedly so. Seems like he is always in contention.’” Just as Graeme McDowell, the 2010 U.S. Open champion, was described by Pete Cowen, the coach, as a man “…who is comfortable in uncomfortable situations,” so Scheffler is a man who makes a complicated life seem uncomplicated. That is one of his secrets. McIlroy continued: “The most exciting thing about last week at Memorial was when he made the triple on 9. Everyone was, Oh, looks like he might let people in here, but he finds a way to steady the ship, make a few birdies when he needs to. He is undoubtedly the best player in the world by miles at the minute, by a long way.”
Just as Graeme McDowell, the 2010 U.S. Open champion, was described by Pete Cowen, the coach, as a man “…who is comfortable in uncomfortable situations,” so Scheffler is a man who makes a complicated life seem uncomplicated. That is one of his secrets. McIlroy continued: “The most exciting thing about last week at Memorial was when he made the triple on 9. Everyone was, Oh, looks like he might let people in here, but he finds a way to steady the ship, make a few birdies when he needs to. He is undoubtedly the best player in the world by miles at the minute, by a long way.”
Scottie Scheffler tees it up on No. 6 during Wednesday’s practice round.
Alex Slitz, Getty Images
They will find Pinehurst’s No. 2 course to be as demanding as any they have played recently. It’s a course where equanimity of temperament is as important as accuracy of driving. The greens of Pinehurst No. 2 were designed not by Torquemada, the ruthless 15th-century persecutor in the Spanish Inquisition, though they could have been, but originally by Donald Ross, the acclaimed Scottish course designer. On, and indeed around, these famous surfaces it’s not how, it’s how many. Every player will at some time or another find himself confronted by a stroke that will make him think, How on earth can I play this shot? and then muse, What on earth do I do here?
For the next four days, watch the world’s best players using putters from yards off the greens. See them take a wood from around the putting surfaces. Look at the way they bump their ball into a bank so that it loses its momentum and rolls slowly and steadily toward the hole. Watch how easily a slightly mis-hit ball can lose its direction, catch a slope and roll off a green and 20 yards down a fairway or perhaps into a bunker. “Everyone is going to be tested,” Tiger Woods said. “It is going to make for long rounds with the fall-offs and run-offs on the greens. The rounds time-wise are going to be a little bit longer. Then, when you’re out in the heat for that length of and period of time, that’s going to take a little bit of wear and tear on you.”
“I think I learned over the course of my career to stay as patient as possible. … Bad breaks are going to come, but it’s more about your response to those things than really receiving the bad break …” – Scottie Scheffler Courses like this play to Scheffler’s temperament. A man who can be handcuffed and clapped into jail one morning and wrestle a difficult golf course into submission with a 5-under par round a few hours later clearly has exceptional control over his emotions. Is Scheffler a hothead? Don’t be silly. His mind may be in torment, but his facial expression and his demeanor scarcely change. He can be harder to read than a book written in hieroglyphics. He remained this way even after that triple bogey on the ninth at Muirfield Village last Saturday. “I was very frustrated, so I’m glad you couldn’t tell,” Scheffler said. “I think I learned over the course of my career to stay as patient as possible. I really didn’t hit that bad of a shot. It just hit a tree and went out of bounds. I kind of reminded myself I was playing good golf and as long as I kept a good…”
