After dominating the 2024 season, Scottie Scheffler got off to a slow start relative to expectations in 2025. A ravioli-making incident around Christmas cost him a few months, and he didn’t pick up his first win of the year until May, watching as Rory McIlroy surged to three wins and the career grand slam to become the talk of the golf world.
At the time, some wondered whether comparisons to Tiger Woods and the pressure that comes with being the No. 1 player in the world were unfair to press so heavily on Scheffler’s shoulders. Golf fans and media have prematurely placed that crown on many heads. Given the talent level is so high and evenly spread across the top of the sport, some thought it was perhaps no longer possible to go on a years-long run of superiority.
And then the switch flipped.
Scheffler torched TPC Craig Ranch to win the Byron Nelson and steadily walked down the field at the PGA Championship, emerging four clear to win his third career major (and first outside Augusta National). A T4 at Colonial was his lone hiccup before getting right back in the winner’s circle at the Memorial, once again bludgeoning the field with steadiness that makes him feel at once beatable and inevitable.
Scheffler rarely produces those outrageous rounds in the low 60s that lead players to surge up the leaderboard at majors, but he also never stalls out completely. His ability to shoot somewhere from 2 under to 4 under in seemingly every round, even when he’s not on his “A” game, is one of the most remarkable occurrences in golf. Toss in the occasional 6 under flurry when putts are dropping, and you get the most consistent presence on leaderboards this side of Woods.
Whenever asked, Scheffler shrugs off questions about his legacy, focusing on the week-to-week approach while not indulging in comparisons to Woods or Jack Nicklaus, occasionally offering an “aw, shucks” response about how it’s an honor to be mentioned in the same breath as the game’s greats. The more he wins, the closer he draws to those names, and he arrives at Oakmont as the heavy favorite to add a U.S. Open to his collection.
Should he come through across those 72 holes at Oakmont, a win in the 2025 U.S. Open for Scheffler would be:
- His fourth major championship, putting him in the top 25 all-time in just 23 major starts
- His 17th PGA Tour win, putting him in the top 50 all-time
- The third leg of the career grand slam, leaving just an Open shy of history
- The first time anyone’s won back-to-back majors since Jordan Spieth in 2015
- Him joining Jack and Tiger as the only men with 15+ PGA Tour wins and 3+ majors before 29 years old
- His 14th top 10 in his last 20 major starts
Such a list of potential honors is remarkable. What’s terrifying is that it doesn’t feel as though he needs to do anything unique to accomplish them. Scheffler’s approach to the sport works whether he’s playing a home event in Texas or a major championship at Augusta National. He doesn’t overpower courses the way Woods did in his prime, opting instead to mold his game to the demands of the course he’s playing.
Scheffler almost never seems to be fighting the course or trying to do something the architecture won’t allow because he possesses the rare shot-shaping and shot-making ability to hit the ball correctly as required at all times. Few are wired to play this way, but Scheffler will happily oblige whatever is asked of him; as such, he has become the most consistent player in golf.
Patience will undoubtedly be the name of the game at Oakmont this week, and for all the talk about how Scheffler’s game matches up with the course — given his accuracy off the tee and ball-striking ability, his greatest advantage may be his mentality. No one is better at grinding out rounds, shrugging off bad breaks and clawing his way to a decent score than Scheffler.
We know Scheffler can hold up under that kind of mental and physical pressure for four days, and this week, we’ll find out whether anyone can match him.