The hardest task at the US Open: figuring out how to beat Scottie Scheffler

HHow do you solve a problem like Scottie Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked golfer who enters the 124th match of the US Open with a head of steam not seen on the men’s tour in years? Rory McIlroy said Louisville police were on the right track.

“The only thing that stopped him from winning a golf tournament was being in jail for an hour,” the Northern Irishman said with a smile on Tuesday at the Pinehurst Resort in the sand hills of North Carolina, where the third major of the year will take place. . on the road in two days. “It seems like every time he shows up he’s the man to beat, and rightly so.”

With charges stemming from a headline-making arrest at last month’s US PGA Championship now dropped, the soft-spoken Scheffler enters the US Open as the biggest betting favorite to enter a major in 15 years. The Masters champion will tee off alongside McIlroy and Xander Schauffele in a large group with the three best players in the world during the first two rounds of the US Open.

There are mold veins and there are all-time heaters like the one Scheffler has stood on. The 27-year-old won for the fifth time in eight starts at the Memorial on Sunday, becoming the first player with five wins in a season before the US Open since Tom Watson in 1980. The winner’s sum of $4 million took him above $24 .m for the year, surpassing the PGA Tour’s single-season winnings record – and it’s only the first week of June. It’s been almost six months since he finished outside the top 10 at a tournament, a span of 11 events.

It’s a stunning level of consistency that has left Scheffler’s rivals, including 2021 US Open champion Jon Rahm, wondering how they will catch up.

“It’s incredible to see what he’s been able to accomplish,” Rahm said hours earlier withdraw from the tournament due to an infected ulcer on his left foot. “Every few years there are great ball strikers that emerge. But when you’re compared to Tiger and the things Tiger has done, you know you’re on a very special level.

“To win the tournaments he wins, to win Bay Hill, Players, Masters, RBC and then Memorial, you’re basically replicating a Tiger Woods season. It’s fantastic to see. He plays fantastic golf and does what he has to do.”

Bryson DeChambeau, whose only major victory came in the U.S. Open at Winged Foot four years ago, said Tuesday that he cornered Scheffler when he arrived on the scene to ask the million-dollar question: What’s the secret?

“He has complete control of his golf swing,” DeChambeau said. “He’s thought through a lot of his putting. As far as I know, he plays incredibly strategic golf. He doesn’t go that crazy. He just hits the right shots at the right time. He really has control over the environment, not just his environment, but the conditions on the golf course. He knows what the golf ball is going to do. He knows how to respond to that. If all goes well, he can right the ship pretty quickly. That’s just a recipe for success, and he’s been able to do it longer than anyone has in a long time.

“He is the gold standard right now and we all look up to him.”

Scheffler’s composure was tested in a very different way last month at the US PGA Championship, when he was arrested outside the gates of Valhalla Golf Club and charged with a crime for assaulting a police officer with his vehicle, along with three felonies. Even that proved almost futile: he was released from prison in time to meet his tee time, carded a five-under 66 and still managed to finish in eighth place on Sunday evening. (All charges were dropped due to what both sides characterized as a “major misunderstanding.”)

a secondary release of bodycam footage on Friday, previously covered up by Louisville police, it showed Scheffler speaking calmly to the arresting officer while handcuffed in the backseat of a police car. It was only upon arrival at the prison, more than an hour after Scheffler’s arrest, that the officer realized he had spent the morning with the best player in the world.

‘You’re too casual to be the No. 1 player in the world’ said the officer. “You should have had a driver.”

It is a sangfroid that, according to McIlroy, is the basis of Scheffler’s success.

“The most exciting thing last week at Memorial was when he made the triple on nine,” McIlroy said. “Everyone was like, oh, it looks like he might be letting people in here, but he finds a way to steady the ship and make a few birdies when he needs to. Without a doubt, by far the best player in the world right now. It’s up to us to try to get to his level.”

For his part, Scheffler insisted he has left the past aside and remained hyper-focused on the present.

“When I play with Xander and Rory here on Thursday and Friday, they’re not going to say anything funny to me on the golf course or try to stop my putt from going into the hole,” he said. “We all had to go out and play our game. As for a target on my back, even if there were, there’s really not much we can do in the game of golf. Most of it is playing against the golf course and against yourself.”