Scottie Scheffler is boring, and like Tiger Woods before him, that makes the 2023 Players champion brilliant
Scottie Scheffler is boring.
It was a popular topic this week at TPC Sawgrass where Scheffler won the 2023 Players Championship in style like the Secretariat by five strokes against Tyrrell Hatton and seven against Viktor Hovland. That boring style was matched by an unwillingness to express emotions, and it prompted Scheffler to walk down the aisle to Winner’s wallet worth $4.5 million.
It’s the story anyway, and it’s told as if, somehow, it’s a bad thing.
While it’s true that Scheffler avoids the tense action of a Jordan Spieth and Justin Thomas’ “I can hit any shot” drama, it’s also true that boring golf has become criteria of the best players in the history of the sport.
When played at the highest level, golf is not exactly a thrilling game. The fact that some players get there says more about the good line those players take in each tournament than it does about their ability to win the biggest events in the world.
“Never aim the ball in a difficult place” was how Jack Nicklaus contextualized it during last year’s Memorial Tournament as part of a longer discussion about course management.
“Never aim the ball out of bounds. Never aim the ball into the pool. You always aim the ball away from it. And if you have to play back towards it, make sure you can’t hook the ball enough to achieve that. that or make sure you can’t dim it enough to get there.”
If you had $1 for every time an announcer said “that’s a smart shot” this week while Scheffler played his way to his sixth PGA Tour championship in his first 97 starts his first, you may have sponsored most of the money for the Player’s Championship.
Although Scheffler didn’t lead after Round 1 or even Round 2, his weekend and championship onslaught was still inevitable. Maybe that’s because he hit the putter worse than the course average in each of the first two innings and was still hanging around at the top of the table. It’s like when Steph Curry scored 35 points at halftime without hitting 3.
This is all part of the plan going forward for the week: hit the ball into oblivion and hope you make enough putts to come out on top. Scheffler hits the green, and even when he misses, he does so at points that could lead to success, such as on Sunday’s par-3 eighth hole, where he scored a birdie. first of the day.
“It was just a prime example of me playing smart there,” said Scheffler. “If you hit that hole high on one of those pins then you’re more likely to make a bogey. So all we did there was try to aim for the front edge, and I did. hit a very good shot and the wind hit it and pushed it to the left a little bit.
“If I hadn’t played so smart, I’d have been in a really difficult position. I was in a position that wasn’t easy to play, but it was a very easy up and down and it’s lucky to see it. enter.”
From the jump at TPC Sawgrass, Scheffler aimed the ball wide. He played to the top of almost every green and missed on the right side of every fairway. Check out his Shotlink holes for an advanced class on how to manage a golf course: stay out of the water on approach shots, steering strokes, and everything in between.
“I thought it was very challenging,” Scheffler said of TPC Sawgrass before the tournament began. “If we’re playing a video game, I don’t think it’s going to be that difficult. But it’s golf, there’s elements and it’s challenging. And you don’t always hit the mark, because So, any time on this golf course — basically any hole, any time you leave your position here — it’s a very tough hole. exactly the way you want it, which is almost impossible on a round of golf, it’s so easy.”
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A consulting statistician for golfers described Scheffler’s dispersion model as tight and described how he moves that dispersion to the right more often than most people. It’s not that Scheffler never misses or misses his target. It’s just that when he does, it won’t cost him more than one hit.
“It was a physical chess match,” Tiger Woods says, who played golf far more boring than most people assume, managing at the PGA Tour level of course. “When you hear me say, ‘I missed the golf ball on the right spot,’ that’s part of the course management aspect.”
This all sounds super simple, and in many ways it’s simple, but professional golfers — especially good ones — are often too confident in their skills to play. smart, reasonable… boring shots are actually not as easy mentally as people think. as it should be.
It requires an extraordinary amount of discipline, patience, and acceptance.
The flip side is that a lot of golfers have boring matches, but almost no one is as gifted at the basics as Scheffler. He’s married to a world-class skill set — Spieth discussed Scheffler’s willingness to take ridiculous short shots, saying “he has great hands” — with the ability Best course management in the sport.
The trick here — and here’s Scheffler’s secret recipe — is to combine the humorous level of confidence that all good players possess with the low self-esteem that comes with playing. Try to make every hit and pull every peg. Scheffler is certainly not perfect in that area, but he has proven himself to be better than most.
“I just stick to my routine,” Scheffler said on Saturday after leading Min Woo Lee by two strokes to get to the final round. “That’s it. Just remember to breathe, and breathing is part of my routine, and I imagined myself being in those moments and so I knew I was ready to be in it. All I can do is try and hit one shot and then the rest isn’t up to me.”
Here’s how Nicklaus said: “I think I’ve done pretty well what I’ve done, but I don’t quite believe it.”
There is no better description for Scheffler’s golfing style than that.
Spieth and others like him have led those of us watching to believe that playing “boring” golf is bad and playing “interesting” golf is good. Maybe so when it comes to entertainment value, but quite the opposite if a golfer wants to win world-class events consistently.
Scheffler’s demeanor – also seen by some as boring – is also in keeping with his course management; both are built for greatness.
Wouldn’t it be more interesting to watch Spieth go on about wind and rotation and how Earth’s axis affects his fading? Absolute. Am I excited to see Jon Rahm swing his arms in the air with every ball that doesn’t fall? You bet.
But Scheffler’s physical plan and mental execution fit together in peace (bordering boredom). And that is a problem. He’s rarely too tall or too short, a skill he says he’s still learning and honing.
Not everyone requires Scheffler’s on-court demeanor to succeed — Spieth has three majors — but it’s hard to do so consistently if your golf course is mostly drama-free.
After starting his career with a score of 0 to 70, Scheffler has unexpectedly won 6 of the last 27 starts. They’re all monsters: two Phoenix Opens, one Master, one Player, Match Play and the “worst” win of them all, last year’s Arnold Palmer Invitational. It’s a never-ending run because, like Rahm, Scheffler hasn’t lost his mind (he’s average this week) and he hasn’t really achieved anything beyond his basic abilities. .
You could even say his victories, like his golf, have become repetitive and monotonous.
In a way, this week confirmed the topic of Scheffler. It’s a fair story, even if the implication is incorrect.
If you are looking for someone to do for you feel something of course, Scheffler isn’t your guy.
But if you’re looking for someone to execute a blueprint that leads to winning everything in front of you, Scheffler is almost in a league of his own.
So it’s fair to call Scottie Scheffler “boring,” as long as you realize that boring golf is, by design, great.
