With remarkable ease, demonstrating why he is the Number One in the world, Scottie Scheffler successfully defended his title this past weekend at the Memorial Tournament. The golfer from New Jersey found some competition in names like Ben Griffin, Sepp Straka, and Nick Taylor, but once again, for the ninth consecutive time, starting the final round as the leader was synonymous with victory, a superiority that received applause and admiration from none other than Jack Nicklaus.
The Golden Bear, in the press conference after the tournament, wanted to first issue a warning to Scheffler not to lower his game or fall into complacency upon seeing his tremendous superiority. But he also took the opportunity to highlight the tremendous potential Scottie is showing, to the point of assuring that his game is better than what Nicklaus himself was capable of offering in his time and enjoys greater solidity.
“If he thinks about being the best and starts to believe he is, very soon he will start scratching his ears and that is death. Once you start believing you’re important and think you’re too good, then you’ll be defeated. As long as he keeps trying to play well, climb a mountain, try to feel like he’s trying to improve, try to be smart, be consistent, and play the best golf he can play at that moment, that’s when he plays well, not when he’s sitting saying: ‘Oh, I’m very good. I can do it.’ No, no…”, Jack began to say.
“I never thought that when I played. I always felt I had 144 rivals, or however many there were, out there to play. I had to play well to beat them. Once I put myself in a position to win, I had to be smart to finish it off. And that’s how he plays. He reminds me a lot of my way of playing. I don’t think I played as well as he does. He’s playing better than me and is more consistent. He’s playing fantastically well and I love watching him play. Whether it’s here, on television, or wherever, I love watching him. Every time he plays, I want to see him,” assured the Golden Bear.
For Nicklaus, the rivals Scheffler had this week at the Memorial are not even close to being in his ‘war’: “I think the great players are those who rise to the occasion and know how to play in the decisive moments of important events. Looking at today’s leaderboard, he didn’t have… I mean, Ben Griffin is a good player, Sepp Straka is a good player, Nick Taylor is a good player. Those were basically all who were there in the decisive moments. But he knows those players are not at his level.”
“If he had… I don’t know who else it could have been, but if he had someone else leading, if Xander or someone like that had been there, maybe he would have said: ‘Well, this could be a bit more difficult. Maybe I have to do something different.’ But he didn’t have to,” concluded Nicklaus.
For Scottie, starting as the leader in the final round is a great advantage because it allows him to develop his game calmly, carefully measuring when it is advisable to take risks or not, without the need to make up strokes on the leaderboard. His winning percentage every time he starts as the leader in a final round confirms that under those conditions he is almost unbeatable. And he himself confirms it by recalling the last time he needed to come back in the final 18 holes of a tournament…
“It’s a tough question. I think the last time I had to push was in Houston, in the final round. I was quite behind at the start of the final round, so when I got to the last nine holes, I had to change some lines towards some of the flags and play a bit more aggressively than I had to, for example, today. It’s different playing with an advantage than coming from behind. I think that day I started five or six strokes behind Min Woo. So I would say that was the last time I really felt I had to push a bit.”
To conclude the analysis of his triumph, both Scottie and Jack agreed on the importance of Thursdays in each event, a first round where you won’t win any tournament, but in the long run, it can be as important or more than the last: “I think my way of looking at tournaments is that 72 holes is a lot of golf. Early in my career, I felt I didn’t put enough intensity into the early rounds. As if I put a lot of intensity on Saturday and Sunday, but I was always on the sidelines in the standings, and that’s something I think Tiger was very good at, putting that level of intensity into every shot.”
“Thursdays,” concluded Nicklaus. “You started the tournament like that. I was very good at that,” he added. “It’s something I’ve always tried to imitate. I never got to play with Mr. Nicklaus, but I guess it was probably a very similar mental process to what he applied in each round. If you’re going to play 72 holes, I mean, how many shots have I taken this week? 278? That’s a lot of shots. And I mean…”, explained Scheffler. “Better make sure the first 70 are good,” Jack interrupted. “That’s right, the first 70 are as important as the last. Every tournament week feels like a marathon, especially when playing on a difficult golf course like this, so it’s even more important to keep your mind in the right place,” concluded the Number One, who continues to expand his record.
