Scheffler's sign of peace makes Augusta surrender

The 2-time Masters champ and undisputed No. 1 player says faith, impending fatherhood and a ravenous competitiveness are easy to reconcile.

The ratings won’t be good, and the afternoon did drag a bit, and none of that was Scottie Scheffler’s fault.

All he did was allow Collin Morikawa, Ludvig Aberg and Max Homa to start losing their grip on the Masters, and then he merely stomped on their forefingers until they fell.

Near the end of the front nine, all four serious contenders were tied at 6-under-par. Bryson DeChambeau had boomeranged in front of them, unable to cope with the concept of holes 55 through 72, and the tentacles of Augusta National weren’t allowing anyone else to move.

But then Morikawa jerked his approach to the ninth hole into a bunker, and wound up with double bogey as Scheffler was patiently waiting to convert a 2–foot birdie.

Aberg, playing in his first major championship and luxuriating in every minute, steered his approach into the pond that guards the 11th green, diametrically opposed to where 70 years of Masters lore tells you to hit it. Morikawa, who has been around long enough to know, did the same thing. “I got greedy,” he admitted.

And Homa, standing on the 12th tee as the last firewall, skied a tee shot that took a kangaroo bounce and buried itself in the bushes, unplayably.

All those led to double bogeys, which meant that Scheffler could put it in cruise and pick up his second Masters in three years. Instead, he gunned it. He birdied 13, 14 and 16 and won by four shots over Aberg, on a track so ornery that if he and Aberg had missed their tee times, the winning score would have been 4-under.

Scheffler won his first Masters by three shots, and it was only that close because he four-putted the 18th hole, fighting a maelstrom of stress and jubilation. This time he summoned all the animation of a car wash attendant. The victory, in his mind, was the only logical outcome. Anything else would have been cruel and, mostly, unusual. Those are the terms that golf must accept over the next few years. Scheffler is 27 and has only begun to win.

So we might as well learn to look beyond the genial exterior and the numbing normalcy of this fellow and actually listen to the things he says, and how he thinks. It was Scheffler, after all, who confessed to an uncontrollable crying jag on the morning of his first Masters win in 2022, with his wife Meredith there to guide him through the doubts. Meredith wasn’t in Augusta this time because she’s on the verge of delivering their first child. So Scheffler invited some “old buddies” and they sat around the house telling stories all weekend.

One of the folks in residence was Randy Smith, the renowned teacher at Royal Oaks Country Club in Dallas. Scheffler was seven years old when they met. Smith has coached him ever since. But at the end of last season, Scheffler faced the fact that his putting stroke needed to be extradited from wherever it had fled. Since Scheffler plays a lot of tournaments and observes a lot of things, instead of dwelling inside his tunnel, he had noticed Phil Kenyon, a Liverpudlian, straightening out the strokes of his competitors. Scheffler wanted to “bring Phil into the team” but he was concerned that Smith would feel usurped, so he consulted him first. Smith agreed, and Smith and Kenyon were sitting together during the green jacket ceremony.

“I could tell Phil was open-minded,” Scheffler said. “When you’re been out here as long as I’ve been, you just see stuff. I loved the way he coached his players. I can’t speak highly enough of the decision Randy made, to watch us work and watch Phil do his thing.”

Scheffler ranked 162nd on the PGA Tour in strokes gained/putting last season. This time he is 96th. At the Masters he was 14th.

“I think people created a weakness in his putting,” said Ted Scott, who carried the winning Masters bag for the fourth time (twice for Scheffler, twice for Bubba Watson) and who Scheffler met at Bible study. “He’s not a weak putter. He’s a very good putter. We had wind shifts today, and in the first four holes I couldn’t get him on the green. He overcame my bad caddying. On No. 5 he finally hit the green, and Collin’s caddie goes, ‘Good job, man. You finally got him on the green.’ I’m like, thanks, man.”

“I had to keep pushing,” Scheffler said. “I did not let myself get attached to the lead. If I’d played defensively it would have been a significantly different finish. If I was just trying to make pars on the back nine, I would have been standing on 18 having to make a par and hoping Ludvig would only make a par. You have to be aggressive here. There’s no way around it.”

Scheffler also has a nuanced way of looking at bigger pictures.

A few decades ago, some pro athletes began billboarding their commitment to religion. Some of them used it as a shield for failure. What about those home runs you gave up? “It was God’s will.” Journalists disliked that answer and some teammates disliked it more.

You also hear many winners talk of the glory of God as soon as the buzzer sounds. At least when they win. When they lose, well, heaven’s gatekeepers must have been in the break room. 

Scheffler made his acceptance speech Sunday and mentioned almost everyone but the Almighty. He later explained that his commitment to his religion is quite separate from the outcome.

“I love winning and I hate losing,” Scheffler said. “I was telling my buddies this morning that I wished I didn’t want to win as badly as I do. It would make the mornings easier. But as they told me, my victory was secured on the cross. And that’s pretty special to know that I’m secure forever. It doesn’t matter if I win or lose, my identity is secure. Today’s plans were laid out many years ago and I could do nothing to mess up those plans. I have been given a gift of this talent, and I use it for God’s glory.

“So when I’m out there I try to compete to the best of my abilities. I really want to win. That’s how I was designed. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that either.”

In other words, God gave Scheffler the ability to hit a 250-yard fade off a hook lie but when it comes to doing it, Scheffler is on his own. He will not be scapegoating the Almighty.

Much was made, in 2022, of Scottie’s insistence on driving his dad’s old Suburban, with 175,000 miles on it. Scottie and Meredith splurged for cheeseburgers after he won at Bay Hill this year. Meredith is not in show business or the media (not that there’s anything wrong with that) but works at a Dallas non-profit called Behind Every Door, which organizes sports and educational programs for under-served Dallas youths. They met at Highland Park High, when they sat next to each other in math class.

So Scheffler is kind of a regular Joe, except when he holds a golf club. And then this happens:

— Since he won his first tournament at Phoenix in 2022, he has won eight other times and finished in the top five 25 times in 46 events.

— This year he has finished fifth, 17th, sixth, third, 10th, first, second, first and first.

— His last over-par round was in Memphis, last August.

— He has played in nine majors, won two, finished second once and third once, and shot a composite 47-under-par.

— He ranks first in par four scoring, par five scoring, front nine scoring and back nine scoring.

— He either birdies or eagles 31.7 percent of his holes.

— When he bogeys, he has at least a birdie on the next hole 47.7 percent of the time.

— He ranks first in strokes-gained/driving and strokes-gained/approach.

“It’s been a while since we’ve had a guy out here who’s supposed to win and then he tees it up and he wins,” Xander Schauffele said, with a touch of helplessness. He and all of golf find themselves stuck in Scheffler’s world, maybe without end.