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Each superhero has an original story and the narrative arc of Scottie Scheffler can be traced on November 15, 2020 – a series of events that almost anyone noticed at the time.
It was the day Scheffler and Tiger Woods played together in the Masters tournament: the first and the only time they played together. Despite the fact that Woods was reigning champion, he was out of the last day.
It was the year of Covid, the tournament was played in winter instead of traditional spring, and the galleries were as sterile as the Augusta trees, the social distancing protocols had kept customers remotely. And yet, it was undoubtedly the moment when the torch of grandeur was given from an American golf star to the next.
Scheffler says that what happened on these 18 holes changed his career. “I only played one touch of tournament golf with Tiger Woods,” he said this week at the Tour championship in Atlanta, “and that has completely changed the way I play tournaments.”
With Shane Lowry from Ireland making up the trio, the group was one of the first to take off at 8:12 am on Sunday 2020. At the time, Scheffler, who is now regularly mentioned in the same breath as the major winner 15 times, was still 15 months from his first professional victory.
“I can’t tell you,” he explained, “the look at his face when we arrived in the first green. We are in 20th place, in a way to play Yada, Yada, Yada, and this guy is just locked. I was died, I said to myself:” Holy Smokes, this guy is in it! “” “.
The two men exceeded the opening hole, Scheffler then described Tiger’s approach to the second: “He had this chip, and he looked at him as if it was one from top to bottom to win the tournament. I say to myself: “It’s incredible! I have never seen anything like this before in my life. »»
Scheffler is now a major quadruple winner and an Olympic gold medalist with a total of 18 PGA tour victories in his name, although he wins with such a frequency these days that the number could have changed when you read this. He has been the world n ° 1 since May 2023 and he is the first golfer from Tiger Woods in 2007 to win at least five tournaments in consecutive seasons.
But that day, he had not yet been able to convert any of his considerable trophy promises. “The question was always:” Hey, how is it that you did not win? “” He said.
“The reason why I felt like I had not yet won, it is that I had not set myself in place enough times and it is one of the things I learned by playing with Tiger. My biggest point to take away was the amount of intensity he took with each blow, it was like the last blow that he was going to have touched.”
Having both birds the second hole in Augusta, Scheffler and Woods were headed in different directions; Woods had dropped three shots at the time when they left the 11th green, Scheffler had made two bogeys but recovered with a birdie and what happened then is engraved in his memory – Woods played the worst hole of his career PGA Tour.
With its out of 12 tee shooting, Woods found water at Rae’s Creek. He hired a stroke and found himself in the water. Another penalty, and now with a fifth blow, Woods made sure to avoid the stream, sending its ball to the back of the green and in the bunker.
From there, he clarified an awkward field of sand, on green and back in water. To date, he was playing like a hacker on the weekend, his next bunker shot was his eighth and a two-step later stepped to his first two-digit scoring on a PGA Tour hole, a 10. On a hole outdoors, he had dropped seven incredible strokes for a disastrous septuple Bogey.
Woods’ chances of a sixth green jacket were already distant, but now they were completely and completely wiped out. But that’s not what Scheffler remembers.
Many golfers would have entered a fall after such a nightmare, not tiger woods. He immediately struck with an out of 13 Birdie. In fact, he finished his round with five birdies in his last six holes. With a seat at the edge of the ring for extraordinary recovery, Scheffler took notes.
“It was like:” Why is this guy still plays? ” He wondered. “He won the Masters four or five times, the best finish he’s going to have is like 20th at this stage. I just admired the intensity he brought in each turn and it is something that I try to imitate.”
Scheffler has always been a solid iron player, and in recent years he has considerably improved his bet. But his secret sauce seems to be his ability to quickly recover from a setback; Its greatest strength is mental.
Scheffler has done less bogeys than anyone on tour this season; He only groped four holes in the open championship of Royal Portrush, but he is used to alleviating the damage with a birdie or an eagle on the following.
At Open, the Scheffler recovery rate was 50%. In the PGA championship, it was an extraordinary 60%. He won the two majors.
The sports psychologist, Dr. Phil Hopey, told CNN Sports how Scheffler makes something so difficult.
“He remains focused in the present moment,” he said. “He lets go what happened and recognizes that the more time he spends to think about things that have not gone well, the more potentially nervous, anxious, frightening or negative he will feel.
“If you go up again, even small things like a minor increase in the tension of your forearms because you have published too much cortisol and adrenaline, you will have a potentially disastrous effect on your swing diagram and your execution.”
Scheffler saw the first hand how Tiger Woods was able to do it, and now it has become the foundation of his own dominant game. Two years later, he won the first of his two Masters titles, and barely stopped winning since. Even many of his rivals now admit that he is almost untouchable.
“The things I do on the golf course, the others can do,” supposed Scheffler. “I don’t hit the ball furthest. I think it’s just the consistency and the intensity that I bring to each golf cycle, without taking shots, do not remove circles, without removing the tournaments. I am there for a goal and it is to finish hard on each blow. ”
Scheffler’s prolific success led to inevitable comparisons with Woods himself, which he rejects as “very silly”.
“I don’t like comparisons with other players because I do my best to be the best version of myself. He completely transcended the game. I think Tiger is a guy who stands alone in the golf game, and I think he will always. Tiger has inspired a whole generation of golfers. Watch what this guy was week, week, it was quite surprising to see.”
So, he does not want to be known as the next Tiger Woods, but it is quite surprising itself, and as fans of the Marvel comics will tell you, there is always room for more than one superhero in the universe.
