Tiger Woods and Scottie Scheffler. As intersections of fate go, their overlap was as quiet as it gets.
It was the final round of the 2020 Masters – the COVID Masters – played in November in front of no fans. With diminished daylight in autumn, groups were sent out Sunday in threesomes. Woods, the reigning Masters champion, and Shane Lowry, the reigning Open champion, were joined by a young PGA Tour rookie making his professional debut in a major championship.
Scheffler, then 22, got his first and still only taste of playing with Tiger. And the impact of that one round still resonates today – and not just in the TaylorMade P7TW (yes, that TW) model of irons Scheffler has been using ever since.
“I watched the way Tiger struck and shaped the ball when I played with him at the Masters in 2020, and that was all I needed to see to want to try them,” he said.
No, Scheffler learned even more from watching Woods suffer his single worst moment on Augusta National – a 10 on par-3 12th hole. Most golfers would sulk and want to hide – even with no fans watching – after that. Tiger simply birdied five of the last six holes.
“My biggest takeaway from playing with Tiger was the amount of intensity that he took to every shot, and that’s something I’ve talked to a lot of guys about,” Scheffler said Wednesday at East Lake, where the world’s undisputed No. 1 golfer will try to make history even Tiger couldn’t by winning a second consecutive Tour Championship and FedEx Cup.
“Tiger was just different in the sense of the way he approached each shot, it was like the last shot he was ever going to hit. I’ve only played with Tiger once in a tournament. I played with him in the 2020 Covid Masters, and 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?’ He’s won the Masters four or five times. Best finish he’s going to have is like 20th place at this point [he end up T38 to Scheffler’s T19].
“I just admired the intensity that he brought to each round, and that’s something that I try to emulate. If I’m going to take time to come out here each week – like it’s not an easy thing to play a golf tournament. 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.”
The most important thing Scottie Scheffler learned from Tiger Woods?
Intensity. On every shot. pic.twitter.com/YIvh9A2NNj
— GOLF.com (@GOLF_com) August 20, 2025
Scheffler has often brushed off the comparisons he gets to Woods, even calling it “silly” to mention him in the same context as the man who dominated the game for more than a decade before injury intervened and accumulated 15 majors.
It becomes increasingly less silly each passing year as Scheffler keeps playing with that Tiger-like focus he saw in Augusta and the accumulating Tiger-like results and building a Tiger-like gap over his peers.
Scheffler has five wins – including two majors – in his last 10 starts. He’s finished in the top eight 13 consecutive times since March – matching the record of Byron Nelson and exceeding even Tiger’s most consistent run. He arrives at East Lake with more than twice as many FedEx Cup points as No. 2 Rory McIlroy, who all he did was win at Pebble Beach, the Players and the Masters. He has almost twice as many Official World Golf Ranking points as McIlroy (21.23-11.26) and has held the No. 1 ranking for 118 weeks since May 2023 – a string second only to Tiger’s two extended runs of 281 and 264 weeks.
“He’s been on a different level for the last two years to the rest of us,” McIlroy said after Scheffler’s dominant victory at Royal Portrush. “He is the bar that we’re all trying to get to at this point, so hats off to him. He’s an unbelievable player, an incredible champion and a great person, too.”
These are the kinds of comments the world’s best players made for so long about Woods. The comparisons are legit. Scheffler ranks No. 1 on tour in four strokes gained categories – total, off the tee, tee to green and approach. He’s become one of the world’s best putters, ranking 16th there is strokes gained there when it was his only weakness two years ago. When he misfires, he ranked second on tour in scrambling. He is unrivaled in bouncing back from mistakes (leading that category as well).
These were all the kinds of things Tiger did when he was at his peak powers.
One thing Scheffler has going for him that may prove even more enduring than Tiger is his consistency. Tiger famously went through multiple swing changes and swing coaches, while Scheffler doesn’t tinker with the swing he’s grooved with his long-time coach Rick Smith.
And as long as Scheffler stays away from cutting ravioli with wine glasses (if he’d taken McIlroy’s advice to hire a chef like he did in switching to a mallet putter, Rory might still not be wearing a green jacket), he’s significantly healthier than Woods ever was even before back surgeries and car crashes derailed his constantly upward trajectory.
While their styles and emotions couldn’t be more different, Scheffler’s focus and determination are his most Tiger-esque traits. And some of that all goes back to his one and only round with the greatest golfer of his generation.
“He hit some of the best iron shots I think I’ve ever seen, still to this day,” Scheffler said of that Covid-Masters Sunday in Bob Harig’s book “Drive: The Lasting Legacy of Tiger Woods.”
“It was really cool for me to see him just kind of flip the switch. He hit one really nice shot into 13 and all of a sudden its’ game on. I knew he was frustrated. I didn’t know him well enough at the time to kind of rib him about it.
“I was actually joking with him (at a tournament in 2022) about that round. And he was like, ‘Yeah that really pissed me off.’ No. 12. That’s one of those special things that makes Tiger, Tiger. A lot of guys would have thrown in the towel there for sure.”
Now it’s Scheffler whose switch always seems to be flipped on, and his peers are the ones trying not to throw in the towel.
