Scottie Scheffler’s dominance in the first half of the PGA Tour season flew under the radar in his quest to the top

How good has Scottie Scheffler been so far in 2022? There are a thousand ways to measure the answer to that question, but with the 2021-22 season just over half way over, what he has accomplished somehow seems underrated. Scheffler makes his first individual start since winning the Masters this April when he plays it at AT&T Byron Nelson (he competes in the Zurich Classic shortly after the Masters, a team event), and there will be a lot of fanfare but probably not enough given how dominant Scheffler is since January 1st.

Where should we start? So what about this statistic: Scheffler has four PGA Tour titles this calendar year, just a fraction less than the rest of the top 10 players in the world. combine. Or this one: He’s made $10.1 million so far this season, that will be the sixth highest income in a single season in PGA Tour history with near-double-digit big-money events still to come.

Scheffler completely dominated his opponents by winning four times in nine events where he skipped to place 4th, 3rd and 2nd, rising straight from 5th to 1st in the world after. when he won the WGC-Dell Technologies Match Play right before that masters. The point gap on the official World Rankings between him and No. 9 Jordan Spieth is the same as between Spieth and No. 223 Matti Schmid of Germany.

Consider his dominance at the top of the golf world. There have been seven events worldwide this year in which the court power was at least 500. Scheffler has won four of those events: the Masters, Match Play, Arnold Palmer Invitational and Phoenix Open. He has more wins in the last three months than Justin Thomas, Xander Schauffele, Daniel Berger, Bryson DeChambeau, Rory McIlroy and Tony Finau have in the last two and a half years (since early 2020).

It’s also not quite old-school domination. The statistical record that underlies what Scheffler has done on the golf course is astounding. He is hitting 2.82 strokes per round, according to Data Golf, when no one else in the world is hitting even 2.5 and only seven golfers are above 2.0. Scheffler has a better overall score than all but 8 golfers and is 2 strokes better than most pro golfers on the planet.

It’s been a truly phenomenal season and it’s likely to keep getting better. Scheffler won the 2015 individual Big 12 championship in Southern Hills and he is well-suited to continue his major championship dominance. It extends beyond his green coat in April. In his last seven major starts, Scheffler has finished in the top 20 in all seven and in the top 10 in five of them. He is a great talent who is considered a great talent because he just broke through with victories.

At 25, I had no idea what direction Scheffler’s career would take. I know that he’s mature enough to handle the emotional rollerblading of professional golf for a long time, and that he has a talent for hovering around the top 10 (or higher) for big chunks of time.

How things play out for the rest of the year is somewhat irrelevant. Scheffler will almost certainly be the PGA Tour Player of the Year given what he has achieved and there is a path through which all of this can be achieved where he could combine one of the great seasons. great in modern PGA Tour history (non-Tiger Woods division). Despite the fact that he’s been on this big heater, I’m not sure the casual golf fan fully understands that all this is going on.

The percentage of world-class courts that Scheffler has beaten (again, 40% of the best 10) is absolutely ridiculous, and given the way he’s done it (a game from tee to green). excellence is complemented by a great short game, not the other game around), he should be the favorite at every event he plays between here and the end of 2022. However, I doubt it will, which tells you everything you need to know about Scheffler’s year and how it is perceived. Since he played well and was as good as he was supposed to be, there was a feeling in golf that what Scheffler was doing was not being seen properly.

Scottie Scheffler is the best golfer in the world, literally and figuratively. I’m just not positive people have realized it yet.