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The first stage of Scottie Scheffler's rise to the top of golf felt like warp speed. He went from No. 15 in the world to No. 1 in the span of five tournaments, and that was before he won the Masters for the first time.
Now he's on a level not seen since Tiger Woods was in his prime.
Scheffler is not the biggest draw at the British Open, not with Woods in the field. Rory McIlroy remains a big attraction, especially in the U.K., and he comes into Royal Troon as a sentimental favorite from his sad collapse in the U.S. Open and going 10 years without a major.
But any conversation at the final major of the year starts with Scheffler, a heavy favorite as he has been in every major this year. And that has taken him time to fully appreciate his status in the game.
“I never really thought of myself as anything but a golfer,” Scheffler said Tuesday. “I was never trying to be famous. I didn’t want to be a celebrity or whatever. I just wanted to become a good golfer and get the most out of myself. It’s brought me this far, so I continue to just try to keep my head down and put in the work that got me here and just continue to practice and hopefully continue to get better.”
His six PGA Tour victories before the calendar turned to July are the most since Arnold Palmer in 1962. Someone pointed out to Scheffler that Palmer's seventh victory that year was a claret jug he won at Royal Troon.
He wasn't sure how to react to that except to shrug his shoulders and say, “Yeah, that would be great.”
“I love the history of the game, and there’s certain things that I know and certain things that I don’t. That was something that for some reason I just never stumbled across,” he said, searching for the right answer. “So I had no idea that that was a thing.”
The British Open figures to present his biggest test.
Scheffler is still relatively new to links golf — everything about his rise to No. 1 is new — having played this style in 2021 for the first time. He has learned to adjust the flight of his ball since links turf creates a little more spin on certain shots. The greens can be slower. Bunkers are to be avoided.
He is a two-time Masters champion, missed a U.S. Open playoff by one shot at The Country Club and was runner-up in the PGA Championship at Oak Hill. But he has never seriously contended in golf's oldest championship.
Even so, the love of the links is there.
He went to the J.P. McManus Pro-Am in Ireland a few years ago and took side trips to Lahinch and Ballybunion. He began this trip across the Atlantic Ocean by skipping the Scottish Open at The Renaissance Club — links style, but not links turf — and going to Turnberry with Sam Burns for a match with their caddies, both good players.
“A tremendous amount of fun,” he said.
And then it was time for work at Royal Troon, the links renowned for having the longest hole (the 623-yard sixth) and shortest hole (the 123-yard eighth) in the British Open rotation.
Most peculiar about Troon is that the outward nine — typically with at least a wee breeze at the players' back — has two par 5s and measures 3,539 yards. The inward nine with the wind in the face has one par 5 and is 3,846 yards.
“It’s basically a tale of two nines on this course,” McIlroy said. “You feel like you have to make your score on the way out and then sort of hang on coming in.”
McIlroy has far more experience on links golf — and a claret jug to show for it from his victory at Royal Liverpool in 2014 — but it still takes time to adjust because “you play 11 months of your golf every year in very different conditions.”
Players also are preparing for weather described as “mixed,” a gentle way of saying it probably won't be terribly pleasant for most of the week. Sunshine gave way to spells of rain on Tuesday, and that was before lunch was served.
PGA champion Xander Schauffele might be the second-most consistent player in golf behind Scheffler — nothing but top 20s in his last 10 starts and 51 cuts in a row — and has acquired a taste for less-than-pleasant conditions, particularly in the Open.
“If the weather gets really bad, you just have to take the bunkers out of play and really try and plot your way around,” he said. “It doesn't have to be super pretty. Just kind of place the ball around the property and really just try and get it in the hole in as few shots as possible.”
That's what Scheffler has been doing all year. Along with winning the Masters for the second time and The Players Championship, his other four wins have come in signature events against the strongest fields — on long courses and short, dry conditions and soft.
And with that has come a level of notoriety — the bizarre arrest at the PGA Championship certainly contributed — he wasn't expecting but has come to appreciate.
“Being out here playing in front of great crowds and having them scream your name and holler when you make putts and be truly rooting for you is a great feeling,” he said. “It's one of the very special perks we have out here.”
