Scottie Scheffler, who else. The world’s Number One has just closed a truly apocalyptic year, which goes from the 2023 PGA Championship to the 2024 one, in which he has played 22 tournaments valid for the world ranking with the following balance, in broad strokes:
– Five victories and three second places (he has finished first or second in 8/22, or in one out of every three tournaments played).
– Eighteen top ten (18/22, 81.81 percent).
– Thirteen top 3 (13/22, 59 percent).
– Five Majors played with a victory (Masters 2024), a second place (PGA 2023), a third (US Open 2023), an eighth (PGA 2024) and, what a horror, a 23rd place (Open 2023).
However, the beast is not satisfied. Rather, it is wounded this week at the Colonial Country Club (Fort Worth, Texas), the scene of the Charles Schwab Challenge, with at least two thorns stuck in its paws, where it hurts the most. One of them is recent and evident: last week he finished eighth in the PGA, but his passage through the dungeons of Jefferson County probably prevented him from finishing much higher, even fighting for the victory. So the beast hopes to regain its lethal routines, let’s see what happens…
The other thorn has been stuck for a longer time. And it has to do with this field, Colonial, and this tournament, the Charles Schwab Challenge. In 2022 Scheffler finished in second position after losing a playoff with his good friend Sam Burns and squandering a two-stroke lead with which he went out to play, as the sole leader, the last round. And in 2023, last year, he finished in third position, but was one stroke short of getting into the playoff that Emiliano Grillo and Adam Schenk played.
If he aspires to remove this thorn, he may have to do it with a very specific tool, the putter. Both in 2022 and 2023 he was the best player in the greens in regulation statistic, he was also the best in 2023 from the tee and the second best in 2022. However, in the SG:Putting statistic he finished 39th in 2022 and 71st in 2023.
The big question, however, is whether this fabulous Number One in the world will be able to maintain these extraterrestrial levels. There is nothing to indicate otherwise, once reviewed, for example, his records of the last year. But if we go back two years, to the 2022 PGA, don’t anyone think that the percentages drop too much: in that time he has played 46 tournaments valid for the world ranking, with seven victories, six second places, and a total of twenty appearances in the top 3 and 31 in the top ten…
Scheffler goes out to play tomorrow, Thursday, in the evening shift, starting at 19.45 hours (Spanish peninsular time), along with Billy Horschel and Keegan Bradley. We will see how the beast roars.
