Scottie Scheffler has won four tournaments and three different jackets in five weeks. The latest was this very Monday, the tartan one, by winning the RBC Heritage. A week before he took home the most famous and coveted of all, the green one, as champion of the Augusta Masters. And just over a month ago, where this fabulous streak that seems to have no end began, he tucked under his arm the red one, the knitted one, the one of king Arnold Palmer, as winner of the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Definitely, Scheffler’s wardrobe has become too small. Not in vain, to these must be added that he already won the Masters in 2022 (although we already know that unless your name is Seve Ballesteros you can only have it for a year in your wardrobe before returning it to the Augusta National) and the Arnold Palmer in that same year 2022. The other PGA Tour tournament where the champion takes a jacket home, also tartan like the Heritage one, is the Charles Schwab Challenge at Colonial. Scheffler has not yet won it, although he has come close. In that same year 2022 he fell in the playoff against his good friend Sam Burns.
It can be said that Scheffler has taken a liking to jackets, although the reality is that this hobby comes from quite a long way back. We travel back in time to the year 2015, April to be more exact. The Annual Western Intercollegiate was being played, on the legendary Pasatiempo course. It was Scottie’s tenth tournament as a university player. He joined in the autumn of 2014 at the University of Texas and had already amassed a second place and three top 5s, but so far he had not won.
The winner of the Western Intercollegiate, one of the most prestigious university tournaments, whose first edition was held in 1947, receives in addition to the winner’s trophy a blue jacket as a souvenir. And of course, Scheffler could not find a better moment or place to achieve his first university victory and collect for his wardrobe the first champion’s jacket.
Scottie won that tournament with three rounds of 66, 68 and 67 strokes. He took a three-shot lead over the second-placed, Shotaro Ban, and in third position, what a thing, finished a certain Jon Rahm, five strokes behind. That was the first university victory of the current World Number One, in a week in which he said he debuted wedges and arrived after doing special work on his game around the greens. Fate wanted him to win for the first time just a few days after Jordan Spieth, another illustrious member of the University of Texas, conquered the Augusta Masters.
By the way, to close the circle of jackets, the Pasatiempo course is considered the masterpiece of Alister Mackenzie, designer of the Augusta National.
