Everyone wonders how Scottie Scheffler keeps winning, and ahead of the Tour Championship, he gave golf fans the answer, sharing an important lesson he learned from none other than Tiger Woods.
“I’m not going to show up to a golf tournament to have a week off,” Scheffler said during his pre-tourney presser at East Lake Golf Club. “If I want a week off, I’m getting out of here. I’m getting out of the public eye, I’m going home. I’m going to retreat a little bit and get rest so I can come back out here and compete.”
That, in a nutshell is the essence of Scottie Scheffler. He loves playing golf, and it means so much to him that he decided that he’s not going to be sloppy about it. He’s not going to half-do it. He’s not going to mail in a round. That, more than anything, is the key to his success.
Where did he learn it? He saw how Tiger Woods played a Sunday round at The Masters.
It was 2020. COVID had taken over the country. Tournaments were canceled and postponed, particularly the ones in the spring. That included the Masters, which was postponed from April to November after the course reopened for play.
Scheffler was making his first appearance at Augusta National that year, and on Sunday, he was paired with Woods, and it remains the only time he has played alongside the golf great in a competitive round.
“I think he made a 10 on the 12th hole, and he birdied, I think, five of the last six, and it was like, what’s this guy still playing for?” Sheffler wondered. “He’s won The Masters four or five times. Best finish he’s going to have is like 20th place at this point.”
According to Scheffler, Woods still played each shot like it was the last one he would ever hit.
“I just admired the intensity that he brought to each round, and that’s something that I try to emulate,” Scheffler noted. “If I’m going to take a week off, I might as well just stay home. I’m not going to come out here to take a week off. If I’m playing in a tournament, I’m going to give it my all. That’s really all it boils down to.”
In that 2020 Masters, according to Scheffler, Woods was engaged with the course from the start.
“On the 1st hole, and I was watching him read his putt, and I was like, oh my gosh, this guy is in it right now,” he recalled. “Then we got to the 2nd hole, and he had this chip shot, and he looked at it like it was an up-and-down to win the tournament. I’m like, this is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.”
From watching Woods, Scheffler developed what the real old-timers call “want to.” It’s a difficult skill to learn and even harder to do consistently, whether it’s golf or anything in life. It changed his approach to golf.
“Want to” is how Scheffler won the gold medal in the 2024 Olympics.
He was four shots back of Xander Schauffele and Jon Rahm at the start of the final round. Other golfers threatened. Rory McIlroy, for example, went on a birdie barrage on the back nine to pull within one of the lead.
But Scheffler clawed his way over the field with an outstanding back nine that included six birdies, and a final-round 62, which was a course record at Le Golf National outside Paris, France, where the event was played.
A lot of golfers would have just given up being four back of the leaders at the start of the day, but champion golfers with real “want to” don’t do that. They figure out a way to win.
The 2020 Masters was where Scheffler got an up-close and personal view of it by watching one of the best ever. It changed his career.
“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,” he insisted.
Scheffler said that change in attitude is the reason for his success.
“I don’t hit the ball the furthest. The things that I do on the golf course, other people can do,” he added. “It’s 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.”
Simple to say. Harder to do. As Yoda said in Star Wars, “Do. Or do not. There is no try.”
