The Scottie Scheffler juggernaut continues to roll, and records and rivals continue to get steamrolled.
Like a well-made natural language processing (NLP) system, the American just gets better and better. The golf machine continues to learn and improve itself at a rapid pace. His six-shot romp on Sunday in the Hero World Challenge was his latest statement of dominance.
Scheffler defended his title by shooting a stunning bogey-free nine-under-par 63 on a difficult scoring day when the second-best round was Ludvig Aberg’s 67. The 25-under-par total was one short of Jordan Spieth’s tournament record in 2014, but the best tally in the 10 years of the championship moving to Albany.
It was also his ninth title of the season, including the Olympics. That led to eight multi-win bonuses (32 points total) on the Official World Golf Rankings (OWGR). Only 191 players across the globe have earned more than 32 OWGR points this whole year. His total points haul for the year is a jaw-dropping 727.45482, comfortably more than double that of world No.3 Rory McIlroy (347.89398 points).
Scheffler started the final round one shot behind Justin Thomas at 16-under. From the moment he found the centre of the fairway on the first hole and drilled his second shot to seven feet for a birdie, he never seemed to be in any trouble. The only time he missed the fairway with his lethal driver – on the par-4 16th hole – he still managed to make a birdie by smashing a superb 211-yard second shot from native area to 10 feet.
“We did a lot of good things on the golf course this week and played some solid golf. I think only two bogeys for the week and then I made a good amount of birdies. Eliminating the mistakes and making a good amount of birdies is always helpful. Teddy (Scott, his caddie) and I felt like we did a pretty good job of keeping the golf course in front of us and staying in position,” said Scheffler.
“It’s pretty surreal anytime you get in the same room with Tiger, but it’s definitely pretty surreal having him hand you a trophy at the end of the day. We’re proud to be supportive of Tiger and his foundation, love the work that they do and it’s always a fun tournament for us to come and play in and support.”
The thing about Scheffler is that he is always finding ways of improving himself. After critics pointed out that his short putting was a big concern, he improved the stats dramatically this season. Even at the Hero World Challenge, he showed up with something new – a claw grip for putting.
And he remains hungry.
“I’m not sure how many tournaments I played, but I’m sure I probably still won less than half, so that other half is something I would want to win,” said the two-time Masters champion.
South Korea’s Tim Kim, who has become a great friend of Scheffler and his family in Texas, finished second at 19-under and said: “We go home and he shoots even par, 1-over. And then he comes out here and wins, and he does it all the time.
“I think the biggest thing that I see is he is always trying to get better. Despite winning nine times this year, he’s always finding little ways. It’s really cool to see that and you can learn a lot from that.”
The two Indian Americans making a debut at Hero World Challenge this year – Akshay Bhatia and Sahith Theegala – finished in the top-10. Bhatia was fourth at 15-under while Theegala dropped to eighth following a disastrous quadruple-bogey eight on the par-4 14th hole.
