Yet here comes Shohei Ohtani.
Crazy comparisons? Sure used to feel that way. But given the latest exploits of Scheffler, who just completed the third leg of the career grand slam at the British Open, or Ohtani, who recently added another hitting/pitching combo not recorded since the days of Ruth, not outlandish.
The beauty of sports strikes again, a reality show so unpredictable that you never really know when the exceptional is going to happen. You just try to enjoy it when it does.
Start with Scheffler and Woods.
A golf season that started with Rory McIlroy’s dramatic and career-defining Masters win has belonged to Scheffler ever since. The 29-year-old Texan won his second major of the season at Royal Portrush, and, with the PGA title he won in May along with two Masters, now has four career majors, joining Jordan Spieth and Phil Mickelson as active players with three legs of the career slam. Scheffler has four wins in 16 starts this season (having begun the year recovering from a self-inflicted hand injury by trying to cut ravioli with a wine glass), along with 13 top-10 finishes.
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The British Open marked Scheffler’s 10th consecutive win when holding the 54-hole lead, reminiscent of, if not as good as, Woods, who did that 37 straight times. But the comparison is growing, particularly in the crazy truth that both men took exactly 1,197 days to go from winning their first major win to their fourth.
The British Open marked Scottie Scheffler’s 10th consecutive win when holding the 54-hole lead.Jon Super/Associated Press
“I don’t think we thought the golfing world would see someone as dominant as Tiger come through so soon, and here’s Scottie sort of taking that throne of dominance. You can’t even say he’s on a run. He’s just been killing it for over two years now,” 2024 British Open champion Xander Schauffele said. “He’s a tough man to beat, and when you see his name up on the leaderboard, it sucks for us.”
Golfers in 2000 knew the feeling. If you were a fan, you no doubt remember what it was like, how utterly impossible it was not to feel Woods’s impact. With Sunday red shirts, intimidating fist pumps, ridiculous drives, incredible accuracy, steely nerve, he had it all.
Tiger opened 2000 with six consecutive PGA Tour victories, the longest streak since Ben Hogan’s six in 1948, including a US Open win that saw him break or tie nine tournament records on the way to a 15-stroke romp. At 24, he became the youngest to earn the career slam, and, by the end of the season, had won nine of the 20 Tour events he entered and set a new low scoring average. Then he turned the corner to 2001, and opened by winning the Masters, becoming the first man to win four consecutive majors, though not in the same calendar year. The Tiger Slam was born, and it has yet to be duplicated.
Tiger Woods won the Masters in 2019 for one of his 15 major championships.David J. Phillip/Associated Press
For his part, Scheffler doesn’t seem interested in trying, saying in Ireland, “I still think the [comparisons are] a bit silly. Tiger won, what, 15 majors? This is my fourth. I just got one-fourth of the way there.”
Scheffler is such a different personality than Woods was on the golf course, with such an even keel, never really looking at legacy-defining statistics or achievements. Outwardly, in his prime, Woods displayed his killer instinct, talking openly of chasing and surpassing the likes of Hogan, Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, or Gary Player, barely acknowledging the golfers around him.
But Scheffler and Woods are in the exclusive club of four, along with Player and Nicklaus, to win the British Open, Masters, and PGA before turning 30. Scheffler will turn 30 on the Sunday of next year’s US Open.
“Having watched Tiger play in his prime — and I think Tiger is the greatest player I’ve ever seen — I never thought in my lifetime I’d see a player as close to Tiger as this man currently is,” former longtime caddie turned NBC commentator Jim “Bones” Mackay said on TV. “Scottie Scheffler just blows my mind every time I watch him play.”
Ditto for Ohtani.
This week, the Dodgers star joined Ruth as the only players to homer in five straight games while also starting one of those games as a pitcher. Add that to he and Ruth being the only men with 500 strikeouts as a pitcher and 100 home runs as a hitter. As USA Today’s Bob Nightengale pointed out after the Dodgers’ 100th game, in which Ohtani had two home runs, the National League’s reigning MVP became the fifth player in league history to hit at least 34 homes runs in the first 100 games three or more times, joining Ruth and Mark McGwire (five times apiece) and Sammy Sosa and Aaron Judge (three times each).
Shohei Ohtani joined Babe Ruth as the only players to homer in five straight games while also starting one of those games as a pitcher.Ronald Martinez/Getty
Ohtani’s pitching numbers may be more restricted than early Ruth, the one year he didn’t pitch at all because of an arm injury, he invented the 50/50 home run/stolen base club. He’s the closest thing to Ruth we might ever see. Just ask Dave Roberts, the Dodgers manager who last year told interviewer Colin Cowherd, “Like you, we didn’t see Babe Ruth, but I’ll take Ohtani all day long.”
Eras are different. Dead balls, live balls, equipment changes, racial barriers. We get it. But comparisons are fun nonetheless.
Tara Sullivan is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at tara.sullivan@globe.com. Follow her @Globe_Tara.
