Casual, low-key, but ruthless.
Royal Prothush cannot provide more realistic link tests with its dramatic terrain and powerful bunker.
But the 2025 Open champion ranked 18th in the park’s 72-hole walk, which seemed relaxed.
Scottie Scheffler somehow managed to make headlines for the Opens that had no final expectations or potentially late twists and turns, and big events usually bring.
The world’s No. 1 lead enters the final round. Almost a game, set and match.
There is no final pairing analysis, and no big champion of this wire is expected, it is just an inevitable preparation.
Scheffler calls it a comparison in his dominance with Tiger Woods, but the truth is that since the age of the Goats, no golfer has made a winning big champion look easy.
Comments from Americans at the start of the event drove a massive explanation, with many labeling four-time major champions as unpopular, candid and even vulnerable.
But Schefler proved himself to strike the perfect balance: he controlled his game, emotional and often unquestionably combined, being the best golfer and ultimately family in the world.
Scottie Scheffler will never do his best since the Tiger Narrative – but that doesn’t mean we won’t.
Scottie & Tiger: 1197 days to Major 4
In the style of trademark Tiger Woods, he won the 12 Masters in 1997, the first of 15 major titles.
The 638-week world No. 1 after his first Grand Slam title, won the Open at St Andrews in 2000, just 1,197 days later.
For Schefler, his first taste of one of the four most precious prizes for golf is also Georgia, defeating big rival Rival Rory McIlroy in three points to claim a Masters green jacket at Augusta National in 2022.
Since the famous victory proved to skeptics that he won the game on him, Schaffler has been prolific, nearly 150 weeks and the best in the world, his critics, who have lost sight in the past few years.
After 13 events, it’s not very flashy, just that many people think Woods is the last one to have consistency and resilience.
Two years later, Scheffler won his second green jacket, but many wonder if he could extend his dominance back then into 2025.
He has.
It was a slow start to the 2025 season, and he spent four months winning eight points in May at CJ Cup Nelson and scoring eight points in a family course in Dallas.
It’s always a situation, when, not when, and a victory in his hometown of Texas began his 2025 season, with his girl’s PGA-winning five-stroke at Quail Hollow.
His four-point victory in Royal Portraits is his second-largest major this weekend, and his career is the fourth-largest major in his fourth career, his first 1197 days – we’ve heard of it before.
Twenty years later, a significant similarity emerged
Although Scheffler downplays this, his current run on paper holders from 2022 to 2025 is the most important extension since the memorable carnival of Tiger Woods from 2002 to 2005 – two decades ago.
The iconic combination of the class twenty years ago and Sunday Red saw an era of totally winning ruthlessness that many think will never see again.
79 events. 20 wins. Four majors. 2.8 SG per round.
The likes of Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson brought together a brilliant golf course that allowed them to spend more than two years on the top of the ranking hill, but both were close to matching the stretch of Tiger Woods.
Stand up, Scottie Scheffler.
81 events. 18 wins. Four majors. 2.8 SG per round.
Just twenty years later, a creepy symmetry. Starting with Tiger Woods, are we seeing the best?
Read more: New Tiger, clues to the Ryder Cup and a new future open-ended champion?
