NASSAU, Bahamas — Scottie Scheffler is modest to a fault.
The 29-year-old Texan didn’t even bother to guess when asked how many different statistical categories he ranked first in this season on the PGA Tour. The answer is 28, which is not too shabby, including winning the Byron Nelson Award for low scoring average (68.13); leading the Tour in Par 4 scoring average (3.89) and bounce back percentage (36.36 percent). He also recorded a Tour-best 17 top-10s while not missing a cut. But when he was next asked to give his season a letter grade, he demurred. “I have no idea,” he said. What will his lasting memory be of a season where he won six times, including the PGA Championship and British Open?
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“I was proud of the discipline that I had throughout the season, and not only that discipline but also staying patient in the beginning of the year when things weren’t going as I’d hoped they would, I was still able to kind of ground out some decent finishes and keep myself in it, and then I started trending and found myself in a really good spot in the middle of the year,” he said.
Tiger Woods congratulates Scottie Scheffler after the final round of the 2024 Hero World Challenge at Albany Golf Course in Nassau, Bahamas.
If Scheffler won’t toot his own horn, allow 15-time major winner and Hero World Challenge tournament host Tiger Woods to do so on his behalf.
“There’s nothing you can’t not like about Scottie. He’s one of the nicest guys you’ll ever meet,” Woods began. “What he’s doing on the golf course is just incredible, the consistency day in and day out, the strategy that he attacks the golf course. It starts from you can see him analyze it from the green back where the flag is, where he wants to miss a tee shot, what club to hit, where the wind is, what side of the tee box he’s to start off on. It’s truly amazing at how thoughtful he is and strategic he is throughout the entire round.”
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Tiger was just getting started. He continued to wax poetic about Scheffler’s mental fortitude.
“And on top of that, he doesn’t have lapses in a round like most players do. He’s there present for all 18 holes and all shots played and that’s hard to do. To do that day in and day out with the grueling schedule that the Tour has and the players are playing now in more of a condensed season, and the big events that he’s playing in. I mean, he won six times and they’re not small events. He’s beating the best fields. So that’s something that I certainly can appreciate and I think that I hope everyone else appreciates it as well because you just don’t see this happen very often.”
It’s a level of brilliance — and dominance — that golf fans haven’t been treated to since Tiger in his heyday. Scheffler’s scoring average this year? Only Tiger bettered it at his most sublime in 2000.
“I truly love watching him hit irons, the shaped shots that he hits, the trajectory, the window changes that he has, the distance control, the miss in the proper spot, the proper spin in certain pin locations. These are all subtle things that mean a lot over the course of 72 holes,” Woods said when asked to name the part of Scheffler’s game he most admires. “That to me is impressive. If you don’t have trajectory control, you can’t have distance control. To see him move it up and down in different windows, use wind, fight wind and control spin is fun to watch.”
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It turns out they are members of a mutual admiration society. When Scheffler was asked what stood out about Tiger’s game, it sounded a lot like Tiger riffing about him. “He always had the ability to hit many types of shots and was always working extremely hard on his game. He was never complacent or satisfied with where he was at with his game, kind of always kept working, I’ve admired that about him,” Scheffler said.
Game respects game.
Scheffler has a chance to go out on top one more time in 2025. This week, he’s the two-time defending champion of the Hero World Challenge and seeking to become the first to win three consecutive titles. This is Scheffler’s fifth appearance at the tournament, where he’s never finished worse than second and never shot an over-par 18-hole score at Albany in 16 rounds. Last year, he posted a 72-hole total of 263 that tied the tournament record of Bubba Watson in 2015, the year the tournament moved to Albany.
“Yeah, I’ve had some success here … It’s a golf course that I like,” said the ever-humble Scheffler. Then he added, “I find this week to be pretty valuable as I look toward starting next season.”
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Once more, Scheffler sounded a lot like Tiger – always looking forward and never back.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Scottie Scheffler shoots for first three-peat at Hero World Challenge
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