Was there ever a doubt?
Scottie Scheffler had converted nine straight victories on the PGA Tour when entering a final round either tied for the lead or trailing by one shot. Such was the position he was in to start Sunday at The American Express, trailing leader Si Woo Kim by one and tied with 18-year-old pro Blades Brown.
Scheffler ran away from the competition with a 6-under 66 around PGA West’s Stadium Course to win by four shots at 27 under. It marked Scheffler’s 20th career PGA Tour victory, all of which have come in a four-year span, while pushing the 29-year-old over $100 million in career earnings. Only Tiger Woods, 50, and Rory McIlroy, 36, have made more.
“Any time you can get mentioned with those guys it means you’re doing some stuff right,” Scheffler said. “At the end of the day it’s not something that will occupy many of my thoughts day-to-day. When I was thinking about getting ready for this week I was just trying to prepare and do the best that I could.”
With Scheffler, it doesn’t matter the test, whether extremely difficult or pillow soft. Once again, the AmEx was the epitome of the latter, producing a winner score or 20 under or better for the 15th straight edition since the event moved from 90 holes to 72 holes in 2012.
Even playing for the first time this year, Scheffler was up for making birdies. He wedged his opening approach 133 yards to 4 feet before rolling in the birdie, one of eight birdie putts converted from inside 5 feet on Sunday.
After a bogey at the second hole, which dropped Scheffler two back of Kim, Scheffler was intimidatingly flawless. Kim and Brown combined to shoot 2 over, sliding to T-6 and T-18 finishes, respectively. Scheffler turned in 4-under 32, and after flipping lob wedges to close range at Nos. 12 and 14, he found himself five ahead of the pack.
“There’s always a certain amount of rust when it comes to playing competitive golf,” Scheffler said. “I think you come out here, you can simulate as best you can at home, but you can only get into the heat of the moment when you’re posting a score and you’re in contention when you’re at a tournament. So, it’s nice to see some of the stuff that I’ve been being practicing and working on has paid off. I work really hard at keeping my wedges sharp, so it was nice today to get some good numbers and be able to hit some wedges in there really close.”
By the time Scheffler reached the par-3 17th, the hole with the island green known as “Alcatraz,” escaping another romp by the world No. 1 required an impossible journey. Scheffler rinsed his tee shot there and made double, but it mattered little.
Ryan Gerard, Jason Day, Matt McCarty and Andrew Putnam all tied for second at 23 under, with Day firing the round of the day, a closing 64.
Brown, who played his eighth straight day of competitive golf dating to last Sunday’s first round of the Korn Ferry Tour’s Bahamas Great Abaco Classic, stayed in the mix until a double bogey at the par-5 fifth. He also bogeyed two of his final four holes to miss out on a top-10 finish and spot in next week’s Farmers Insurance Open.
“Getting to play with Scottie Scheffler in the final group at 18 years old is – I had to pinch myself couple of times just to make sure I was, you know, this was real,” Brown said. “Not the Sunday that I would have liked, but I overall had so much fun. ... You’re telling me I get to play in a PGA Tour event and to play with Scottie Scheffler and see him win it, that was insane.”
Scheffler switched back to his TaylorMade Qi10 driver this week after he had been using the new Qi4D since the Hero World Challenge in early December. He ranked fourth in strokes gained off the tee over his two weekend rounds on the Stadium.
Since Scheffler’s T-20 at The Players last March, he hasn’t finished worse than T-8. That streak spans 17 worldwide starts and now includes seven wins. To compare, McIlroy would need to include his last 29 starts to count 17 top-8s. Also, McIlroy’s 10 wins since the start of 2022 ranks second behind Scheffler’s 20.
Scheffler’s last showing outside the top 25 came at the 2024 BMW Championship, where he tied for 33rd.
“It’s not like we’re looking at Tiger, but he’s putting up Tiger-ish numbers, even though Tiger was, you know, obviously the GOAT,” Day said. “But, yeah, I mean just, every time he tees it up, he’s right around the lead. And that is one of the most difficult things to do, to be always stay hungry to the point of not being satisfied. Because it’s very easy to get satisfied out here. You win a couple of times, you’re like, Well, I’m kind of relaxed and I can coast for a little bit.
“And it seems like he never wants to relax.”