PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Rory McIlroy joined the television broadcast during the final round of a recent PGA Tour tournament and suggested world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler should maybe try a mallet putter to help cure his woes on the greens.
Oops.
Scheffler, who has had an all-time run of ball-striking on the PGA Tour over the last three seasons, was 162nd in “strokes gained: putting” last year and was well into the triple digits in the same stat to begin 2024. However, at last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational, he finished fifth — only his third time in the top five in that metric for a week in his entire career — en route to a victory.
And he did it with a mallet.
“I’m not going to give him any more advice, that’s for sure,” McIlroy said with a smile.
So Scheffler has learned to putt, and returns to TPC Sawgrass looking to become the first golfer in tournament history to go back-to-back at The Players Championship. He’s going to be hard to beat — just ask the rest of the field.
Xander Schauffele, a top-10 ranked golfer in the world, was asked if Scheffler was the guy everyone was chasing.
“Yes,” he said.
And does that feel like an uphill battle, he was asked in follow-up, if Scheffler gets his putter really going?
“Yes,” Schauffele replied again, with a smile.
With the exit of Jon Rahm to LIV, Scheffler has started to put distance between himself and the rest of the tour’s top golfers at the peak of the world ranking. There just doesn’t seem to be any golf course where Scheffler’s skill-set would not make him the favourite.
While Tiger Woods had his near two-decade long run as a dominant player on tour, there’s been about a half-dozen guys who have picked up the baton recently: Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, McIlroy, of course, Dustin Johnson and Rahm as the most prominent examples.
Scheffler was bashful when pressed to name himself in that mix, but he said it’s good for the sport to see a clear No. 1 guy.
“You look at Steph Curry for those years where the (Golden State) Warriors were winning a bunch (of NBA championships), people would say they got tired of it, but at the end of the day, people were still showing up and watching because he was incredible to watch, and you want to watch greatness when you’re out there,” Scheffler said. “I think it would be good for the game of golf, and we’ll see what happens with the sport in the next few years.
“It’s a pretty challenging game and we’ve got a lot of talent out here, so being that dominant figure I think is a very tall task to ask of anybody, but we’ve got some guys out here that I think can definitely pull it off.”
As far as this week goes, Scheffler said the reason there hasn’t been any back-to-back champions (or that many multiple winners, either — in the 50-year history of the event, only one golfer has won more than twice, Jack Nicklaus, and he did it at three different courses before the event found its home at TPC Sawgrass) is because of the golf course.
“It really is a Pete Dye genius design, where you have to hit all different kinds of shots, and it tests you in a lot of different ways,” Scheffler said. “That’s why I think it’s one of the best places we play on tour, just because it really doesn’t suit one type of player.”
The stars haven’t quite emerged for the PGA Tour through the early part of 2024, with Scheffler being the most notable of the tour’s elite to lift a Sunday trophy. Wyndham Clark, last year’s U.S. Open winner, captured the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, but that happened in a rain-shortened 54-hole event. Hideki Matsuyama is likely the other biggest “star” to have wonthis season, winning the Genesis Invitational, but even his odds were long that week.
There have been plenty of good stories — Chris Kirk and Grayson Murray returned to the winner’s circle after each emerged from mental health challenges and battles with alcohol, while rookie Jake Knapp was a bouncer at a California nightclub just two years ago as he fought to keep his playing dream alive, and Nick Dunlap became the first amateur to win on the PGA Tour since 1991.
But this is the crown jewel of the PGA Tour’s schedule, and the stars are out in force hoping to win the tour’s big one with the major championships around the corner.
“It’s our premier event. This is the home of the PGA Tour,” Scheffler said. “And so for us, I think it’s a special place to come back year after year and get to play this golf course, and compete with the best players in the world and the best players on our tour. It’s always a fun week to come here and compete.”
BEST BETS
Favourites:
• Scottie Scheffler (+550): The putter switch and boatloads of confidence that’s come along with it sees the world No. 1 come to TPC Sawgrass after a victory last week.
• Viktor Hovland (+2500): The reigning FedEx Cup champ has had back-to-back top-10s at TPC Sawgrass, including a career-high third place last season.
Long Shots:
• Russell Henley (+4000): Henley has long been one of the game’s most accurate drivers and his putting has improved significantly of late. He’s one of just four golfers to notch top-25 finishes at The Players the last two years and finished tied for fourth last week.
• Nick Taylor (+10000): The top-ranked Canadian already has a win this year, owns one of golf’s best short games and continues to get more comfortable on bigger stages. He made six birdies in a nine-hole practice round Tuesday.
Notable: Fourteen of the last 16 winners of The Players Championship have played in the morning on Thursday and the afternoon on Friday.
Odds via Sports Interaction
