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Scottie Scheffler’s PGA Championship win is a reminder to the world of his greatness
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Because of who Scottie Scheffler is, and how often he wins, and how little he seems to feel other forces of nature, there are few other protagonists you want to see face predicament in the eye more than him.
And there he was Sunday, looking at a scoreboard across the 10th green, unblinking.
What everyone deemed impossible was possible. After beginning Sunday with a three-shot lead in the final round of this PGA Championship, Scheffler stared at his name alongside Jon Rahm’s on the leaderboard. Both at 9-under-par. Both tied for the lead.
There are times when every game tests the greats, and this was it for Scheffler. A wayward driver led to a 2-over front-nine 37, and the world’s best player looked, at best, off balance, and worst, unnerved. How would he respond?
By lifting the Wanamaker Trophy and winning the third major of his career. That’s how.
Scheffler’s first non-Masters major victory came without a flurry of fist pumps or breathless celebrations hole by hole, holding it all in until he teared up walking onto the 18th green, he and caddie Ted Scott with arms over one another’s shoulders. He won by five strokes, a methodical, resilient victory by the game’s most consistent winner, and the utter collapse of one of his greatest competitors.
After making the turn at Quail Hollow in distress, Scheffler reset his day in real time, found a swing fix somewhere in his bag of tricks and took control. Fairways and greens on the way in produced a tap-in birdie on the 10th and back-to-back birdies on Nos. 14 and 15 and what, seemingly in a flash, returned to a runaway win. Just like the Masters in 2022. Just like the Masters in 2024.
In the end, it was still a surprise that the day ever found any drama at all. Xander Schauffele, the tournament’s defending champion, walked off the course Sunday after finishing the week at 3-under and declared it all but over. “He rinses and repeats,” Schauffele said of Scheffler. “He’s in a spot where it would be shocking if he didn’t win today.”
At the time, Scheffler was over on the driving range, still an hour from his tee time, despite Schauffele’s making it seem as if ribbons were being tied to light posts for the rest of the field. Instead, Rahm, a two-time major winner, found himself back on the big stage for the first time in a long time. The 30-year-old closely resembled the man who won at Torrey Pines and Augusta, not the one gone adrift in majors since joining LIV Golf early in 2024.
Midway through Sunday’s final round, CBS analyst Trevor Immelman told the audience it was Rahm, not Scheffler, who looked like the day’s man to beat.
But the putts stopped dropping for the Spaniard. Would-be birdies burned edges on Nos. 13, 14 and 15. A par putt barely skirted past on the 16th, dropping Rahm to 8-under and three shots off the lead. His championship hopes gone, Rahm hit his ball into the water on Nos. 17 and 18, double-bogeying both to fall into a nine-way tie for eighth place.
Harris English, Bryson DeChambeau and Davis Riley will all say they tied for second place at the 2025 PGA Championship and be factually correct, though it took a 72nd-hole Scheffler bogey to not lose by a touchdown.
“This is a golf course in which the fairways are pretty big,” Scheffler said. “The greens are fairly big as well, but the spots you’ve got to hit to are quite small. I did a good job this week of staying patient and hitting the important shots really well.”
He makes it sound so easy, but Scheffler, for all his brilliance, did not play swathes of flawless golf this week, not by his standards at least. An unpredictable driver regularly yanked left, contributing to him missing 25 greens over four days. His stats didn’t paint a picture of some dominant showing.
But a little wayward play wasn’t enough to derail this generation’s best player.
Though no one in the game has ever been immune to coming undone, Scheffler, in his present form, is too good to befall serial misfortunes. Arriving at Quail Hollow’s brute closing stretch holding a four-shot lead, Scheffler finished par, par, bogey.
Sunday marked the eighth time since the start of 2024 that Scheffler entered a final round holding or tied for the 54-hole lead. After going 3-of-8 in such situations earlier in his career, from 2020 through 2023, he’s now 8-of-8 in this stretch, a jarring memo that the best is only getting better.
It’s all history in real time. Scheffler’s play since 2021 is golf’s most dominant stretch since Brooks Koepka’s four major wins in eight tries from 2017 to 2019. The difference is Koepka didn’t bother winning outside those majors. Scheffler? He has 12 non-major wins since 2022, including two Players Championships.
At the risk of belaboring the numbers, and the absurdity, Scheffler’s 15 total individual PGA Tour wins since since his first (2022 WM Phoenix Open) are as many as those of Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas — the official world golf ranking’s Nos. 2, 3, 4 and 5 players — combined.
The only other players to win so much, so early? Tiger Woods (1996 to 1999) in 3 years, 32 days, and Jack Nicklaus (1962 to 1965) in 3 years and 45 days. Scheffler has done it in 3 years, 94 days.
Scheffler, set to turn 29 next month, has entered the rarest space. The golfer who stands among the world’s best athletes. He is as dominant in his sport as anyone is in anything. Katie Ledecky, Patrick Mahomes, Simone Biles, Shohei Ohtani, Nikola Jokic. Whoever. Scheffler is right there.
It can be hard to process such things, so the best way to appreciate Scheffler is to simply watch him.
Starting play Thursday on the back nine, he countered some uncharacteristic mistakes with a chip-in for birdie from 20 feet and a chip-in for eagle from 35 feet. Later, he birdied two of his final three holes to finish 2-under 69. He hadn’t played particularly well and ended the day complaining about mud balls. He was, nevertheless, tied for 20th, five shots back
Friday? A ho-hum 3-under 68 despite hitting only 6 of 14 fairways. Scheffler scrambled around, saving pars left and right, and made birdie putts of 15, 9 and 5 feet and a tap-in on No. 14. Moving into a share of fifth, three behind 36-hole leader Jhonattan Vegas, Scheffler said afterward, “I got a lot out of my game the last couple days.”
Then Saturday. The stuff of lore. A closing five-hole coup d’etat — tap-in eagle on the reachable par-4 14th, short birdie on 15, par on 16, 18-foot birdie on 17, birdie on 18 from a fairway divot. From two shots back to a three-shot lead in under an hour.
“He just does everything really well,” Max Homa said Saturday, after spending the day alongside Scheffler, watching seven birdies and an eagle fall. “It’s a lot like what Tiger did, just through the bag, everything is so good. So he’s bound to make a lot of birdies and avoid bogeys.”
(Top photo: Ross Kinnaird / Getty Images)
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