This isn’t to say that every PGA Tour event pre LIV Golf was absolutely stacked with heavyweight talent but for a Signature Event to have such a gulf in class at the top of the leaderboard should be exhibit A for why golf is currently broken.
Exhibit B should be Memorial Tournament host Jack Nicklaus essentially calling the PGA Tour a pile of crap when alongside Scottie Scheffler in the winners press conference.
World number one Scheffler has three wins in his last four starts, including the PGA Championship which also failed to ignite at Quail Hollow.
All rather facile victories over players that you wouldn’t watch if they were having a putting competition in your back garden.
Scheffler stuck out like a sore thumb back in his home state of Texas as he romped to the CJ Cup Byron Nelson with an eight shot margin on 31-under-par.
His nearest challengers? Erik Van Rooyen and Sam Stevens… Granted this was not a Signature Event so the poor leaderboard and lack of a challenger is understandable and we have grown to accept diluted fields in regular PGA Tour events.
The PGA Championship was a damp squib but every so often we are due a flat major.
But last week’s Memorial Tournament was a clear sign that the Signature Events are not going to work in the long run to fill the void left by the departed LIV Golf players.
Behind Scheffler at Muirfield were Ben Griffin, Sepp Straka, Nick Taylor, Maverick McNealy, Russell Henley, Brandt Snedeker, Rickie Fowler, Jordan Spieth and Keegan Bradley. None of whom are in Scheffler’s league.
That makes it three cakewalk victories in quick succession.
According to Data Golf we are seeing Tiger Woods levels of golf from Scheffler.
Scheffler’s current run of form is second only to Woods’ burst of dominance in 2000 both in very different eras.
Scheffler is undoubtedly the best player in the world, the deserving world number one, the favourite for next week’s US Open but for two of his three wins he has been helped by a lack of competition.
Nicklaus said it himself.
“Great players are ones who rise to the occasion and ones who know how to play coming down the stretch in important events,” Nicklaus said
“Ben Griffin’s a nice player, Sepp Straka is a nice player, Nick Taylor is a nice player. Those were all the guys that were there basically coming down the stretch, but he [Scheffler] knows that those guys are not in his league.”
A post Rory McIlroy grand slam winning golf landscape is quite boring. McIlroy himself wasn’t in the field last week while Bryson DeChambeau and Jon Rahm are seen four times a year and Xander Schauffele hasn’t been at the races since returning from a rib injury this season.
All in all that culminates in this Tiger-esque era where one player is so demonstratively clear of everyone else on tour in terms of his consistency.
Scheffler’s last 40 months have seen him win nineteen times while he has more wins on Tour than Manchester United have in the Premier League since January 1st. Maybe that could be the stat which prompts the arrogant Ruben Amorim to change from his three at the back nonsense at Old Trafford.
Scheffler is the dominant player in golf right now and it’s particularly fearful for everybody else that he is hitting his peak for the summer rather than fizzling out after a spring surge last year.
He is at a stage where if he plays at his current level he can’t be beaten.
But has it ever been so easy?
It doesn’t feel like we are seeing anything special compared to the furore that surrounded Woods in his pomp.
Scheffler became the first player since Woods to win back to back Memorials yet he didn’t have to beat McIlroy, Rahm, Bryson etc while the likes of Cam Smith, Dustin Johnson and Brooks Koepka are of near irrelevance.
It was far too easy. Several of the world’s best players weren’t there.
Much in the same way that Manchester United as a club and as a fanbase (especially Gary Neville) don’t realise how much trouble they are in, the PGA Tour continues to sleepwalk into no mans land believing that chucking more money at something will solve things.
Yes, Scheffler is playing fantastic golf and you have to admire someone who repeatedly turns up and beats everyone on a given week but outside of the majors is he really being tested?
There’s a reason that after the PGA Championship, most golf fans’ attentions either switched off or drifted to Oakmont for the US Open.
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