PITTSBURGH – Nine years ago, Scottie Scheffler made his major championship debut at the U.S. Open at Oakmont Country Club. He missed the cut but left more confident than ever that he would be back. “It definitely made me excited to get out here for real because it was a pretty fun week,” he said.
Scheffler, 28, arrived at Oakmont for this week’s playing of the 125th U.S. Open as a three-time major winner and world No. 1. He’s won three times in his last four starts dating to the CJ Cup Byron Nelson and counts wins at the PGA Championship and a successful title defense at the Memorial during that stretch. Is he the man to beat? It sure looks that way. Scheffler is a prohibitive favorite to win at +275 (via BetMGM), which are the shortest odds entering the U.S. Open since Tiger Woods was +175 in 2009.
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And rightfully so. Scheffler has been on a Tiger-like run since earning his first victory at the 2022 WM Phoenix Open. With 16 Tour titles to his credit, Scheffler has delivered bettors a better return on investment than the Dow Jones, Nasdaq or S&P 500. If you bet $100 on him for each tournament he’s played, you would have wagers of $7,900 and banked $13,105 in winnings for a tidy profit of $5,205, or 65.9 percent. No wonder that several gamblers looked up Scheffler’s Venmo account and sent him a thank you.
“Maybe a couple bucks here or there,” he said.
But it turns out that didn’t happen nearly as much as the requests when he failed to deliver for his bettors.
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“I think everybody hears from fans whether they have a financial benefit or anything in their outcome. That’s why I had to get rid of my Venmo because I was either getting paid by people or people requesting me a bunch of money when I didn’t win. It wasn’t a good feeling,” he said.
But it sure will feel good to notch another win and claim his national open for the first time.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Scottie Scheffler getting Tiger-like odds at U.S. Open
