ATLANTA — Scottie Scheffler shies away from comparisons to Tiger Woods even as the numbers are starting to make such links inevitable.
After all, Scheffler has been No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking longer than anyone since Woods. He is the first player on the PGA Tour since Woods to have five-plus wins in back-to-back years. And he comes into this week’s Tour Championship, which will decide the FedEx Cup winner for the 2025 season, with a top-10 finish in each of his past 13 tournaments played.
“It’s very silly to be compared to Tiger Woods,” Scheffler said. “I think Tiger is a guy that stands alone in the game of golf, and I think he always will. Tiger inspired a whole generation of golfers. You’ve grown up watching that guy do what he did week in, week out; it was pretty amazing to see.”
The tall Texan who’s still 10 months away from turning 30 years old has a point about Woods, the California native who turns 50 in late December, when it comes to the big picture. When he won the Masters for the fifth time in April 2019, Woods pushed his count of major championships to 16, which trails only the 18 won by Jack Nicklaus. The most recent victory for Woods on the PGA Tour was at the Zozo Championship in Japan in October 2019, when he matched Sam Snead’s career record of 82.
Scheffler’s first of what are now 18 PGA Tour wins didn’t happen until the Phoenix Open in February 2022, and the oft-injured Woods’ playing schedule has been increasingly limited, so there is little overlap between their careers at this point.
Scheffler was amazed by the only time he played with him in a tournament, a moment nearly five years ago that shaped the way the Dallas resident now dominates his sport.
It was the final round of the Masters in November 2020, both of them 11 shots out of the lead with no chance to win the year that Augusta National pushed its annual tournament back by seven months due to the coronavirus pandemic.
What stands out from that autumn Sunday was Woods making a 10 on the par-3 12th hole and then making birdies on five of his last six holes. Scheffler remembers the opening hole just as well, though.
As he looks back to the start of his pro career, Scheffler felt he was guilty of not giving himself enough chances at winning and rarely being in the final group.
“I always found myself just a little bit on the outside looking in, and that’s one of the things I learned from playing with Tiger,” he said. “We’re in 20th place or whatever going into Sunday at the Masters. Tiger has won five Masters, he’s got no chance of winning the tournament. Then we showed up on the first hole, and I was watching him read his putt, and I was like, ‘Oh, my gosh, this guy is in it right now.’
“That was something that I just thought about for a long time. I felt like a change I needed to make was bringing that same intensity to each round and each shot. And I feel like the reason I’ve had success in these tournaments is … just the amount of consistency and the intensity that I bring to each round of golf is not taking shots off, not taking rounds off, not taking tournaments off.
“When I show up at a tournament, I’m here for a purpose, and that’s to compete hard, and you compete hard on every shot.”
That’s what the golf world has witnessed since Scheffler finally broke through with that first PGA Tour victory three years ago and, within two months, was a Masters champion and No. 1 in the world. He put the green jacket back on in 2024 with his second Masters title, and he is within a U.S. Open triumph of completing the career Grand Slam after winning the PGA Championship this past May and the British Open a month ago.
It doesn’t mean he wins every week, of course. Golf is still golf, an impossible game to master.
This week is an example of that. The change to the format in the Tour Championship put an emphasis on getting to Atlanta’s East Lake Golf club, and now the top 30 players remaining in the FedEx Cup competition start from scratch for 72 holes to see who wins the trophy and its $10 million payout from a $40 million purse for the tournament.
Unlike years past, Scheffler has no advantage by starting at 10 under par, nor does he have a points advantage — and neither does anyone else have any reason to treat this unlike any other tournament, at least when it comes to the starting leaderboard. It’s a welcome change for most players because they signed off on it.
Masters champion Rory McIlroy — who is No. 2 in the Official World Golf Ranking and finished that way in the FedEx Cup standings after Sunday’s BMW Championship was won by Scheffler — said he didn’t mind the starting strokes because great play over a long stretch should get some reward.
“I didn’t hate the starting strokes. I thought that the player that played the best during the course of the season should have had an advantage coming in here,” said McIlroy, who won the tournament in 2016 (before advantages were awarded) and again in 2019 and 2022 (the first and fourth years of the format that is no more). “But you could also argue if it was starting strokes this week, Scottie with a two-shot lead, it probably isn’t enough considering what he’s done this year.”
Scheffler started with a two-shot lead at East Lake each of the past three years, and it still took him the third try to win the FedEx Cup. He loves the pressure of competing, though, and not starting with an advantage is sure to get his attention from the start.
He also has his regular caddie back on the bag. Ted Scott had been away while dealing with a family emergency that forced him to miss all of the BMW Championship that wrapped up Sunday at Caves Valley Golf Club near Baltimore, as well as part of the FedEx St. Jude Championship that opened the postseason the week before that at TPC Southwind in Memphis.
Scheffler is quick to point out how his career took off when he brought in Scott to work with all the preparation he put into his job.
This year has been as good as any for Scheffler, especially considering he started late because of hand surgery from an off-course injury and he doubled his count of major titles, but it’s not over yet. Scheffler was reminded of that in 2022 when he lost a six-shot lead in the final round to McIlroy.
That was the year he won the green jacket for the first time, rose to No. 1 in the world and had four victories. When he returned home from Atlanta, though, he was met with condolences for not winning at East Lake.
“It just irked me so bad, finishing off the year where guys were like: ‘Hey, great playing, I’m sorry about how it ended,’” Scheffler recalled. “It’s like: ‘You know what, man, I won the Masters this year, won a few other tournaments.’ It was a pretty good year.”
Another edition of the Tour Championship starts Thursday. It’s already been a good year for Scheffler.
