AUGUSTA, GEORGIA – APRIL 14: Scottie Scheffler of the United States and caddie Ted Scott celebrate … [+] on the 18th green after winning the 2024 Masters Tournament at Augusta National Golf Club on April 14, 2024 in Augusta, Georgia. (Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
Romantics like to say the Masters starts on the back nine on Sunday. But this year it ended somewhere between the ninth green and the middle of Amen Corner, leaving Scottie Scheffler to stroll up the 18th fairway with a four-shot lead and some unexpected time to consider baby names.
Of course, it was very unlikely he went there, as his focus is legendary. “He never looks different,” observed CBS’ Ian Baker Finch, and that was never more true than watching him manage his game at Augusta National.
For one tantalizing moment, after rookie Ludvig Oberg rolled in the most unlikely right-to-left, downhill 36-foot birdie putt on No. 9, there was a four-way tie atop the Masters leaderboard. But not for long.
Scheffler almost holed his approach to that uphill, par-4 to grab a one-shot lead. He then stuck to the straight and narrow while Collin Morikawa made double-bogey from the bunker on 9, Aberg pulled an approach into the pond on 11 and Max Homa hid his ball in the thick ivy behind the green on the 155-yard 12th.
Scheffler never seemed to break a sweat all day. Perhaps that’s how you behave when you can get up and down for par from a landfill and make it look like no big deal.
Scheffler capped off his Sunday 68 the same way he started it, chipping close and rolling in a par after missing a green in the best place possible. This wasn’t Nick Faldo making 18 straight pars to win the Open Championship at Muirfield but you know Faldo would have been impressed with how Scheffler steered away big trouble when it was the wise play — like missing 11 to the right of the green and playing to the middle of the green at 12, not attacking the pin.
While Scheffler can mash the ball like few others among golf’s current tier of elites, he also controls his game like Faldo or Hale Irwin in their primes. Now that he has improved his putting — he ranked 14th in strokes gained putting this week — he’s extremely difficult to overtake when he’s hitting the ball as well as he generally does.
He wasn’t an overnight success story like Tiger Woods, but now he’s done something Woods didn’t accomplish. This was Scheffler’s fifth start at the Masters and he left with his second green jacket. The only other player to win twice in his first five Masters starts was the late Horton Smith, a Bobby Jones contemporary who died in 1963.
It’s worth noting that Scheffler’s winning share of the $20 million purse is $3.6 million. That’s somehow less than the $4 million Dean Burmester took home for winning last week’s LIV event in Miami but there’s no need to feel sorry for Scheffler.
He’s won three times while earning $15,093,235 this year, bringing his career earnings to about $57.7 million. Luckily for him, he should have a new exemption on his 2024 taxes. His wife, Meredith, stayed at home in Dallas this week in the late stages of pregnancy.
Scheffler played 69 PGA Tour events before breaking through for his first victory at the 2022 WM Phoenix Open, where he beat Patrick Cantlay in a playoff. He’s now won nine of his last 50 official events and finished 17th or better in all nine events this year.
He deserves a break but it’s not clear if he’s going to take one. He has committed to next week’s RBC Heritage event at Hilton Head, and just might try to squeeze in one more event before a paternity leave.
While Scheffler is well liked by his fellow PGA Tour members, they’ve got to be getting tired of seeing him win so often. But Scheffler has never won any of the other three majors (PGA Championship, US Open, Open Championship) so you know he’s going to do everything he can to retain his sharpness. This could be quite a year.
