Tour star: Scottie Scheffler’s dominance ‘comes with a LIV Golf asterisk’
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World No.1 Scottie Scheffler might be enjoying an ‘untouchable’ run of form, but should it come with a reality check? This DP World Tour winner thinks so…
Eddie Pepperell says we are witnessing a Tiger Woods-like era of dominance from Scottie Scheffler – but there’s something niggling him about the World No.1’s remarkable run of form.
In May alone, Scheffler won the CJ Cup before adding a third major to his CV at the PGA Championship, and on Sunday he became only the second player – after Woods – to successfully defend the Memorial Tournament.
It takes his PGA Tour titles tally to 16 – three years, three months and 19 days from his first. Woods, for what it’s worth, needed three years, three months and three days to get to the same number.
And for Pepperell, who was speaking on the Chipping Forecast podcast he co-hosts with BBC analysts Andrew Cotter and Iain Carter, that is enough to strike comparisons between the two. The question is longevity, and whether or not Scheffler has it.
“If you think about Tiger, it was remarkable how much he achieved with how much time off the game he had because of injuries,” the Englishman explained. “I sometimes ask myself – and we’ll never know, obviously – but if Tiger had spent much less time in the gym, would he have had many more majors? Clearly his time improving himself physically helped him win majors, but there came a point of diminishing returns.
“If Scheffler can stay healthy and have a 25-year career, it is very conceivable to think that he could win 50 PGA Tour events, which would put him in that echelon.”
It’s not the only ‘what if?’ on Pepperell’s mind. Like so many other players and fans, he can’t help but wonder what might have been had a certain rival tour never poached certain top-10 players.
“The only asterisk that I would put next to Scheffler at the moment, and it’s a small one, is just the LIV stuff,” he said.
“I was watching him [at the Memorial] go against Ben Griffin, who is obviously in good form, but if that had been Jon Rahm, or Bryson [DeChambeau], or Dustin [Johnson] when he was in his pomp, or Brooks Koepka, I think Scheffler would have been pushed more over these last two or three years than he has been because of the whole players not being there as they’re on LIV.
“And that may have resulted in fewer victories.
“Now, I will say, given his major record, he is still ahead of everybody. But I really wish he would have been going up against Jon Rahm more regularly, because, to me, it’s the Jon Rahms of the world that are going to test Scottish Scheffler and really show us – where we compare Tiger to Phil – we can’t necessarily do that at the moment.”
Signature howl
Another issue borne from the advent of LIV is the PGA Tour’s big-money, no-cut Signature Events – which, the cynics will tell you, were designed to keep certain players from joining the Saudi-funded league.
Last week’s Memorial Tournament was the seventh of eight Signature Events throughout the season. The final one will come the week after the US Open at the Travelers Championship.
The top loading of these elevated tournaments has led to certain players skipping them. Rory McIlroy, who prefers to prepare for majors by playing the week before, was heavily criticized for taking the Jack Nicklaus-hosted event off his schedule – particularly after the 18-time major champion noted that he had not heard from golf’s newest Grand Slam inductee.
In McIlroy’s defence, Pepperell noted that “there’s room to change the model” and that “Signature Events should replace, effectively, what were the World Golf Championships”.
He explained: “In my opinion, the Memorial and the Arnold Palmer are two that would absolutely fit that mold, along with The Players and one other – probably the Genesis, given its relationship with Tiger Woods.
“But you think of events like the RBC Heritage, that shouldn’t really be a Signature Event, nor should the Truist Championship, and then you would get Rory playing those four as if they were World Golf Championships.
“I’m of the opinion we don’t need the best players together 20 weeks a year. I actually think that creates the opposite problem, and you start to dilute some of the very best in the world.
“The model that was in place 10 years ago was a very good model, because if you had Viktor Hovland or Collin Morikawa show up to an event where Rory and Scottie weren’t there, they were the stars. And that’s good, because they are still brilliant golfers, so their stock goes up. Whereas if they’re in an event with Scheffler or McIlroy, their stock gets depleted significantly, and they can get lost. And they shouldn’t be getting lost, because they are still brilliant players, and we still have 25 stars in the game of golf across LIV and the PGA Tour who are capable of carrying a week.”
Master Scheff
But despite the lack of competition from the LIV stars, Pepperell is still in awe of Scheffler as a fellow professional golfer.
“I watch him hit his wedges, for example, and I think it makes complete sense,” he explained. “The amount of times he stiffs them, or nearly holes them, or just hits them to 10 feet again and again. That makes sense as I watch it with my eye, because everything looks perfect with a short iron, and he’s got so much control, and his club face is so passive through the ball.
“However, when I watch him off the tee – when Simon Holmes, on the Sky coverage, slowed it down, I said to [my wife] Jen, ‘If my swing ever looked like that, I would be calling a psychologist.’ I’d probably be sick and give up the game. But yet he hits fairway after fairway. He’s the best off the tee on tour, statistically. Tee-to-green he’s streets ahead of everyone.
“It is remarkable how good he is at repeating his golf swing. And that is something when you talk about talent. That, to me, is talent, because you can’t really put your finger on exactly why or how that individual can repeat that move again and again and again, but he does it, and that tells me that from a very young age he has just become so unbelievably good at his hand-eye coordination and his ability to repeat the feel.
“I think, a la Tiger in his dominant period, we are witnessing greatness. And I love it.”
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Scottie Scheffler is the fourth quickest player to get to 16 PGA Tour victories - just 16 days longer than Tiger Woods.
