Every superhero has an origin story and Scottie Scheffler’s narrative arc can be traced back to November 15, 2020 – a series of events that barely anybody noticed at the time.
That was the day Scheffler and Tiger Woods played together in the Masters tournament: the first and only time that they’ve ever played together. Despite the fact Woods was defending champion, he was out of contention on the final day.
It was the year of Covid, the tournament was being played in winter instead of the traditional spring, and the galleries were as barren as the Augusta trees, social distancing protocols had kept the patrons at bay. And yet, this was arguably the moment when the torch of greatness was handed from one American golf star to the next.
Scheffler says that what transpired over those 18 holes changed his career. “I’ve only played one round of tournament golf with Tiger Woods,” he said this week at the Tour Championship in Atlanta, “and it completely changed the way I play tournaments.”
With Ireland’s Shane Lowry making up the threesome, the group was one of the first to tee off at 8:12 AM on that Sunday in 2020. At the time, Scheffler, who is now mentioned routinely in the same breath as the 15-time major winner, was still 15 months away from his first professional win.
“I can’t tell you,” he explained, “the look on his face when we got to the first green. We’re in 20th place, kind of playing yada, yada, yada, and this guy is just locked in. I was taken aback, I was like, ‘Holy smokes, this guy is in it right now!’”
Both men parred the opening hole, Scheffler then described Tiger’s approach to the second: “He had this chip shot, and he looked at it like it was an up-and-down to win the tournament. I’m like, ‘This is incredible! I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.’”
Scheffler is now a four-time major winner and an Olympic gold medalist with a total of 18 PGA Tour wins to his name, although he’s winning with such frequency these days that the number might have changed by the time you are reading this. He’s been the world No. 1 player since May 2023 and he’s the first golfer since Tiger Woods in 2007 to win at least five tournaments in consecutive seasons.
But on this particular day, he hadn’t yet been able to convert any of his considerable promise into a trophy. “The question was always, ‘Hey, how come you haven’t won?’” he said.
“The reason I felt like I hadn’t won yet is I hadn’t put myself in position enough times and that’s one of the things I learned from playing with Tiger. My biggest takeaway was the amount of intensity that he took to every shot, it was like the last shot he was ever going to hit.”
Having both birdied the second hole at Augusta, Scheffler and Woods headed in different directions; Woods had dropped three strokes by the time they walked off the 11th green, Scheffler had made two bogeys but recovered with a birdie and what happened next is etched into his memory – Woods played the worst hole of his PGA Tour career.
With his tee shot on 12, Woods found the water at Rae’s Creek. He incurred a penalty stroke and ended up in the water again. Another penalty, and with now a fifth stroke, Woods made sure to avoid the Creek, sending his ball to the back of the green and into the bunker.
From there, he thinned an awkward pitch out of the sand, over the green and back into the water. By now he was playing like a weekend hacker, his next shot from the bunker was his eighth and a subsequent two-putt resulted in his first double digit score on a PGA Tour hole, a 10. On a par-three hole, he’d dropped an incredible seven strokes for a disastrous septuple bogey.
Woods’ chances of a sixth green jacket were already remote, but now they were completely and utterly dashed. But that’s not what Scheffler remembers.
Many golfers would have gone into a tailspin after such a nightmare, not Tiger Woods. He immediately punched back with a birdie on 13. In fact, he finished his round with five birdies in his last six holes. With a ringside seat to an extraordinary recovery, Scheffler was taking notes.
“It was like, ‘What’s this guy still playing for?’” he wondered. “He’s won the Masters four or five times, best finish he’s going to have is like 20th at this point. I just admired the intensity that he brought to each round and that’s something I try to emulate.”
Scheffler has always been a strong iron player, and in recent years, he’s dramatically improved his putting. But his secret sauce seems to be his ability to quickly recover from a setback; his biggest strength is mental.
Scheffler has made fewer bogeys than anyone else on tour this season; he only fumbled four holes at The Open Championship at Royal Portrush, but he makes a habit of mitigating the damage with a birdie or eagle on the very next hole.
At The Open, Scheffler’s recovery rate was 50%. At the PGA Championship, it was an extraordinary 60%. He won both majors.
Sports psychologist Dr Phil Hopley explained to CNN Sports how Scheffler makes something so difficult look so simple.
“He stays focused in the present moment,” he said. “He lets go of what’s happened and recognizes that the more time he spends thinking about things that haven’t gone well, the more potentially nervous, anxious, fearful or negative he’s going to feel.
“If you’re still simmering, even small things like a minor increase in the tension in your forearms because you’ve released too much cortisol and adrenaline, is going to have a potentially disastrous effect on your swing pattern and your execution.”
Scheffler witnessed first-hand how Tiger Woods was able to do it, and now it’s become the foundation for his own dominant game. Just two years later, he won the first of his two Masters titles, and he’s hardly stopped winning since. Even many of his rivals now admit that he’s almost untouchable.
“The things that I do on the golf course, other people can do,” Scheffler surmised. “I don’t hit the ball the furthest. I think it’s just the amount of consistency and the intensity that I bring to each round of golf, not taking shots off, not taking rounds off, not taking tournaments off. I’m here for a purpose and that’s to complete hard on every shot.”
Scheffler’s prolific success has led to inevitable comparisons with Woods himself, which he dismisses as “very silly.”
“I don’t like comparisons to other players because I’m doing the best I can to be the best version of myself. He completely transcended the game. I think Tiger is a guy that stands alone in the game of golf, and I think he always will. Tiger inspired a whole generation of golfers. Watching what that guy did week in, week out, it was pretty amazing to see.”
So, he doesn’t want to be known as the next Tiger Woods, but he’s pretty amazing himself, and as fans of the Marvel comics will tell you, there’s always room for more than one superhero in the universe.