How do you stop Scottie Scheffler? Simple question, difficult answer. One possibility is that his wife goes into premature labour in which case he will quit the Masters mid-tournament. Then the expected stormy weather and 40mph gusts are likely to at least delay the first-day proceedings. Wind, rain, gas and air, it could well be that the world’s best golfers are left scratching their weather-beaten heads.
Scheffler is an unassuming sort of genius. “About as boring as they come,” in the blunter words of his friend Harry Higgs, but there is more to him than anodyne stereotype. Two years ago, he woke up on Masters Sunday with a three-stroke lead and “cried like a baby”. He revealed he was “overwhelmed” and unready, but his wife, Meredith, reminded him of their faith and told him it was not his choice. He won.
The stats are now on his side too. Just over two years ago, he had never won on the PGA Tour. Since then he has eight wins, including that 2022 Masters and this year’s Players Championship. This has been achieved with a distinctive swing shuffle, and the remarkable fact that he was ranked 144th in the PGA Tour putting stats before last month’s Arnold Palmer Invitational. It beggared belief. Improve that and heaven help the rest. With a new putter and his work with Southport coach Phil Kenyon reaping dividends, he is now inside the top 100.
He is also approaching a year as the world No 1. Only Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson have spent more weeks top of the pile since Tiger Woods was up there. Of course, direct comparisons have been hampered by LIV Golf players being ignored by the Official World Golf Ranking, and the prospect of a duel with Jon Rahm, LIV’s talismanic signing, is a lip-smacking one.
Given that golf has become a fractious playground of riches, it is a shame that the Augusta weather is likely to make for such a damp and miserable start to the championship. With the PGA Tour-LIV Golf squabble exposing the insularity and remarkable lack of self-awareness in the game, we need a good Masters. The magazine that dubbed the last major, the Open, “a dud” may have overstated the lack of interest, but Brian Harman’s procession was admirable rather than intoxicating. If golf can turn its penchant for off-course blood-letting into an on-course power struggle it would be a timely reminder of the good of the game.
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Golf’s big sell is a reminder of a scene from the old sitcom Blackadder in which foppish fool Lord Percy dabbles in alchemy but it does not quite go right. In a reverential tone, he asks: “Can it be true that I hold in my mortal hand a nugget of the purest green?” Golf has attempted its own transformation but found it, too, has been left to gush over a devalued product. For this week only, though, there is a reunion of the world’s elite and a chance to turn the quest for a green jacket into sporting gold.
A fractured game will be temporarily repaired as the best of all tours forget contracts, politics and boardroom bargaining. And for the 13 LIV players assembling by the whitewashed clubhouse, and for McIlroy as he aims to complete the career grand slam, Scheffler will be the man to beat.
No doubt his religion acts as a pressure valve, but he plays with an ease others strive for. “The heart of the back nine are the most fun holes out there,” he said, which will be news to McIlroy who has often looked paranoid on that part of the course. And while golf is full of tweaking tinkermen, Scheffler is not about to change for aesthetic reasons. “Misunderstood?” he mused when asked about his swing. “Some people said it would be hard for me to be consistent, hard for me to play under pressure with that much action going on in the swing. But I’ve had the same coach since I was seven years old and I don’t think we’re going to change it anytime soon.”
Kenyon gave an insight into the Scheffler character from his time working with him. “I’ve had harder students with a 20 handicap because they are successful in business and think they know it all,” he says. “It’s more about the person himself. It makes me laugh when you hear things written in the media or on social — ‘Oh, he just needs to do this or that.’ You see it all the time, but you need to know what’s going on when you get under the bonnet.”
Underneath that exterior is a man eager to learn. Hence he also took Ben Crenshaw’s advice and once sat down with his old caddie Carl Jackson, who is Augusta’s green guru after half a century carrying bags at the Masters. Jackson gave Scheffler his yardage book complete with arrows signifying grain and slopes. “I always look at it in the lead-up to this tournament because there is some kind of weird stuff that goes on around the golf course,” the grateful recipient said.
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Putting is always pivotal here. “The game within the game,” Kenyon says. Miss from five feet and the stats say you lose 0.85 strokes to the field. It’s the knee-knocking range. Who is the best from there? “Matt Fitzpatrick,” says Kenyon, who works with the Englishman as well as Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose and Max Homa.
Augusta, though, is traditionally deemed a course where approach shots are the decisive factor, and that is where McIlroy’s chances of ending a decade without a fifth major may live or die. McIlroy knows this, of course, which is why he flew to Las Vegas recently for a four-hour fix with Butch Harmon, Tiger Woods’ old coach. Sir Nick Faldo, one of only three players to defend a Masters title, was unconvinced: “He’s one of the greatest drivers of the golf ball and then he stands up with a wedge and we all cringe.” Doubts about whether McIlroy could see out another major without a healthy Saturday night lead are yet to be doused.
• The Masters 2024 guide: tee times, leading contenders and how to watch
Rahm, the defending champion, would appear to have a tremendous chance to win again, given the number of players out of form, and he has been in the top ten on five of his past six visits. He has not said it but you sense a simmering desire to show that his $300 million jump to LIV Golf has not weakened him.
But if not him, there are other LIV Golf contenders. Joaquin Niemann has the form and talent, but it is hard to look beyond a fit Brooks Koepka at the majors. While fans of the PGA Tour and LIV Golf squabble about status, Koepka gives the impression of merely filling time between the only four serious weekends of his year. He is not the sort of golfer to know the nerdiest golf stats, but is aware of where he stands on the major list. Only 14 people have more and, if he wins another, Koepka will join Faldo and Lee Trevino on six.
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Koepka was runner-up last year, as he was in 2019, and he has been preparing for this week since December. At such times it is worth remembering the assessments of gruff Yorkshire coach Pete Cowen. “The lad’s got balls of steel” was one description. “A street-fighter with absolutely no quit in him,” was another. Forget his LIV form — if anybody is going to stop Scheffler it may well be him. We can also expect good showings from Ludvig Aberg and Wyndham Clark, but rookies rarely win here.
Scheffler has distanced himself from suggestions that he is on the cusp of dominating golf in a way not seen since Woods. It is a fanciful claim given he has only won one major, and McIlroy, Jordan Spieth and Koepka have all had gilded patches. As for the old Woods, he will make a slow walk around Augusta National, fighting time, an ailing body and the Scheffler generation, but it is beginning to look like the long goodbye.
Our tips for the Masters 2024
If you have a few quid to spare then stick it on Brooks Koepka at 20-1. A proven force at the majors he has been largely overlooked in the rush to praise Scottie Scheffler.
You will not get good value on a Scheffler, Rory McIlroy or Jon Rahm win, but I like the chances of Wyndham Clark at 33-1, despite it being his first Masters, and the same goes for Ludvig Aberg (28-1).
Will Zalatoris (35-1) is good around here and healthy again, but if you want ilonger odds, Shane Lowry is a good each-way price at 40-1 and Patrick Reed is a past winner at 70-1. Do not bet on Tiger Woods.
