ATLANTA — Scottie Scheffler is clearly uncomfortable with any comparisons to Tiger Woods and again this week did his best to discount them. He spoke humbly and reverentially about Woods, whose exploits are well known in the game.
But one area where Scheffler certainly appears to measure up is in his relentless pursuit of strong play.
Woods was renowned for almost never taking a tournament round for granted. His ability to focus on regular events was legendary. For all the talk of his quest to win major championships, Woods never seemed to take the “minors” off. He racked up 82 PGA Tour victories that way.
Scheffler is on a similar, although far shorter journey. Coming into the Tour Championship, he had posted 13 consecutive top-eight finishes on the PGA Tour, the longest such streak since Tom Weiskopf in 1973.
He appears on his way to another one after a first-round 63 at East Lake, which left him two shots back of leader Russell Henley at the $40 million Tour Championship—where the winner gets $10 million and the FedEx Cup title.
Last week, with virtually nothing on the line—Scheffler was already assured of leading the FedEx Cup points through the BMW Championship, which came with a $5 million bonus and was not going to improve his standing as it related to this week’s Tour Championship—he won again.
Of course, professional golfers want to win tournaments, and Scheffler has now won 18 of them in his PGA Tour career, all in the past four years.
But given his exploits this season—major championship victories at the PGA Championship and British Open, points-leading bonuses at the end of the season—he might be excused if he had let up last week. Human nature is a strong pull. Players many times do not put all their effort in, for various reasons. Nobody would have been bothered if Scheffler had, say, finished 12th.
Instead he turned a four-shot 54-hole deficit into another victory.
He invoked Woods when asked about that type of fortitude. And he told a story about the 2020 Masters—one he has mentioned previously.
“My biggest takeaway from playing with Tiger was the amount of intensity that he took to every shot, and that’s something I’ve talked to a lot of guys about,” Scheffler said of the final round at Augusta National that year, the first time he was paired with Woods, who was the defending champion and well out of contention especially after making a 10 at the par-3 12th—his highest score ever in pro competition.
“Tiger was just different in the sense of the way he approached each shot, it was like the last shot he was ever going to hit,” Scheffler said. “I think he birdied five of the last six, and it was like, what’s this guy still playing for? He’s won the Masters five times. Best finish he’s going to have is like 20th place at this point.”
Woods seemed on his way to shooting 80 or worse, but finished with a 76, which was one better than his then-worst score of 77 shot during the third round of the 1995 Masters—when he was 19 years old and playing the event for the first time. He shot scores of 68-71-72 and that 76 to finish in a tie for 38th.
But Scheffler, who spoke about this same round three years ago, was impressed.
“He hit some of the best iron shots I think I’ve ever seen, still to this day. It was really cool for me to see him just kind of flip the switch. He hit one really nice shot into 13 and all of a sudden it’s game on. I knew he was frustrated. I didn’t know him well enough at the time to kind of rib him about it.
“I was actually joking with him [at a tournament in 2022] about that round. And he was like, ‘yeah, that really pissed me off’ about No. 12. That’s one of those special things that makes Tiger, Tiger. A lot of guys would have thrown in the towel there for sure.
“The shot he hit into 16 was probably the best iron shot I’ve ever seen. The wind was blowing hard. Pin was on top right. Greens were soft. He hit this no-spinning cut 7-iron. No matter what direction the wind was going to go, I felt he was going to hit that ball to a foot. It was just so purely struck. Not a lot of spin. Fading toward the pin. It was pretty amazing.’’
And that one round—the only time they’ve played together—stuck with Scheffler. Don’t give up. Don’t mail it in. Woods made a career of it.
“I admired the intensity that he brought to each round, and that’s something that I try to emulate,” Scheffler said this week at East Lake. “If I’m going to take time to come out here each week—like it’s not an easy thing to play a golf tournament. If I’m going to take a week off, I might as well just stay home. I’m not going to come out here to take a week off. If I’m playing in a tournament, I’m going to give it my all. That’s really all it boils down to.”
Scheffler’s victory at the BMW gave him five in a year for the second time, a first since Woods did it in back-to-back years in 2006-07.
Of course, Woods won five times or more in 10 different seasons and made back-to-back five-win seasons routine.
That’s why Scheffler was hitting the brakes on Tiger talk.
“I think in the simplest form, I think it’s very silly to be compared to Tiger Woods,” he said. “I think Tiger is a guy that stands alone in the game of golf, and I think he always will. Tiger inspired a whole generation of golfers. You’ve grown up watching that guy do what he did week in, week out, it was pretty amazing to see.
“I talk about a mental change I made because I played one round of golf with him in a tournament. I’ve only played one round of tournament golf with Tiger Woods, and it completely changed the way I look at how I play tournaments.
“I can’t tell you the look on his face when we got to the first green, and I look over, and we’re in 20th place, kind of playing, yada, yada, yada, and I look over and this guy is just locked in, and I was taken aback. I was like, holy smokes. Then we got to the second hole, and he had this chip shot and he looked at it like it was an up-and-down to win the tournament. I’m like, this is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.”
Scheffler apparently took good notes.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Tiger Woods Comparisons to Scottie Scheffler May Be Unfair, Except for One Area.