Monday Rap: Scottie Scheffler and Nelly Korda Deliver Yet Again, And We're All Lucky To Witness Such Greatness
Houston Chronicle/Hearst Newspapers via Getty Images. Getty Images.New week, same winners. That's the vibe in professional golf right now. A week after Scottie Scheffler entered the Masters as the world No. 1 and clear favorite and won the damn thing, Nelly Korda answered with a major tour-de-force of her own.
Two lowkey, unassuming Americans in their 20s reign over pro golf at present. They're both on historic runs at the exact same time. Korda's win at the Chevron Championship saw her become just the third woman ever to win five straight times on the LPGA Tour and the first player to win five times in a row on any major tour since Tiger Woods in the mid 2000s. She's a two-time major winner at 25 and, after two years of struggles with her health, a bonafide superstar at the height of her powers.
Korda entered the week +550, not dissimilar from Scheffler's odds to win the Masters. One key difference: the next-closest odds for the Masters were +1000 (Rory McIlroy), then +1200 (Jon Rahm) and +1400 (Brooks Koepka). On the women's side, the next closest to Nelly were four players at +2500. The gap, at least according to oddsmakers, between Korda and the rest of the LPGA is bigger than the gap between Scheffler and the rest of the PGA Tour. In addition to that top-dog status, Korda's also dealing with the expectation that she can and should and has to single handedly elevate the sport of women's golf. The Caitlin Clark effect.
To come into a week shouldering that type of burden and still deliver—that's what greats do. But it wasn't without stress. Korda played solidly when the third round restarted on Sunday morning, but solid was enough to climb to just one shot back with 18 to play. After a three-hour break she got off to a great start to the final round and led by four after a chip-in birdie at 10.
That's when play slowed to a halt—rounds took over 6 hours—and her ball striking went awry. After the round, Korda would say she finally felt she could breathe after "the longest nine holes of my life." On 15, she pulled her tee shot into a water hazard, and her next shot pointed to the razor-thin margins that often determine massive tournaments. Hitting her third, with a four-shot lead, she pushed her approach dangerously close to a water hazard right of the green. She had aimed a good 10 yards further left but hit a block at the worst time. Her one-armed finish and quick-walk suggested she thought it might be wet and a big number might be in play.
Instead, it pitched right next to the flag and she escaped with a stomachable bogey. Next came an up-and-down from left of the 16th green which she converted with a nervy five-footer for par. Up ahead, Maja Stark was in the process of birdieing her last two holes to post -11, which meant Korda would have to play the last two in even par. She did one better, drawing a mid-iron that hit the hole on 17 (she missed the ensuing birdie putt) and producing two perfect shots on the par-5 18th to set up a simple two-putt birdie.
“It’s everything that I’ve always wanted as a little girl, to lift that major trophy,” Korda said. It felt like a major, major day for women's golf, which now has a clear-cut world No. 1, American, with a picture-perfect swing, and easygoing nature and crossover appeal. The crowds on-site at Carlton Woods and the energy online confirmed the obvious: having an iconic player like Nelly is very, very good for golf. She'll now have to deal with even more asks of her—not just to keep winning, or to do more media, but to play that Caitlin Clark-type role. It's not a fair expectation, Korda's not a self-promoter by nature. She's said many times that she prefers to stay in her own little bubble. She keeps her circle tight. When asked what she can do to help elevate women's golf she spoke not of herself but of exposure for the tour as a whole.
"It's a stage," she said Sunday. "We need a stage. We need to be on primetime TV, and we need to showcase the talent we have out here, which is a lot. Hopefully we have—a bunch of people came out this week. The crowds were amazing. That's just what we need.
We also need the support from not just the crowds but the television networks."
Her and Scheffler are similar in that way. They prefer to let their golf do the entertaining. Which brings us to Scottie.
Why Scheffler's latest win might be his scariest of all
Winning the Masters is a highly emotional experience. For mere mortals, at least. There are countless podcast interviews with past winners in which they detail how their lives changed overnight and what a whirlwind those few days after the victory are.
Which makes Scottie Scheffler's three-shot win at the RBC Heritage downright frightening for the guys trying, unsuccessfully, to beat him.
Scheffler went home right after finishing the post-win obligations. He arrived home after midnight on Monday morning. After a brief stop at a local tavern he headed home to be with his wife, Meredith, who is 8+ months pregnant. By all accounts he went mostly off the grid for a few days and didn't turn up to Hilton Head until Tuesday evening. He played just nine holes on Wednesday and that was it as far as preparation goes. And keep in mind this was an elevated event with the PGA Tour's best players in it.
He got off to a meh start on Thursday with a two-under 69. But 72 holes affords enough time to overcome a meh start if you play perfect golf, and that's what he did from then on. He kicked it into gear with 65-63 to take the solo lead into Sunday and then took the tournament by the throat with a chip-in eagle on 2 in the final round. From that moment it was over, even if a puzzling decision from the PGA Tour to not move up tee times resulted in him having to polish off the surefire W on Monday morning.
It's wild how…I don't want to say easy, but that's the word that comes to mind…the whole week looked. Plenty of guys take a full week to celebrate a major championship victory. But because Scottie is so grounded in his faith and his family life, you get the sense he doesn't ride the emotional rollercoaster because golf is only a part of his life. That means he avoids the self-worth lows some other guys might face, but he also avoids the I'm-the-fucking-man feeling. His belief and faith in god's plan—whether you agree with what he's saying—is absolutely be an asset to his golf. His life is just preciously simple right now: play golf, go home, spend time with wife and friends, pray, go back to the course, do it all again. Winning golf tournaments just isn't that difficult for him right now. It's not that taxing. So why not play the week after winning The Masters, and why not win? It's such a special place to be mentally.
"It was part of our plan this week to come here and play," Scheffler said Monday. "I was able to go home for a couple days and celebrate. I didn't really put much thought into it. I had committed to playing the tournament. That's really all it was. There really wasn't too much thought on that. I committed to playing here, it was part of the plan, so we stuck to the plan. I talked about it at the beginning of the week; I didn't show up here just to have some sort of ceremony and have people tell me congratulations. I came here with a purpose.
It's also very rare for golf fans to have a collective hypothetical actually answered. It never actually happens. For the first chunk of this year the narrative with Scottie, when he was putting poorly, was imagine what this guy could do if he just putted tour average. Well, he's gained ground putting in five straight starts and we have our answer. it's gone pretty damn well: WIN, WIN, T2, WIN, WIN.
Scottie's average world ranking points per start is now above 15, levels we haven't seen since prime Tiger Woods, and his eight-point lead over No. 2 Rory McIlroy is larger than McIlroy's lead over No. 748 Tiger Woods.
"The points are big and obviously the money is nice," Wyndham Clark said, "but everyone is trying to chase Scottie and he's making really tough because he keeps winning."
The gap is widening, not narrowing. Who's the second-best player in the world right now? Is it Wyndham Clark, who's been Scottie's closest chaser in signature PGA Tour events but missed the cut at the Masters. Is it Jon Rahm, who put up a stinker in his Masters title defense but now plays on LIV and doesn't have the chance to measure himself against Scottie? Is it Ludvig Aberg, who followed up his solo second at Augusta with a T10 at the Heritage.
Whoever it is, they're not even close to Scottie Scheffler. And now Scheffler and Meredith will almost certainly welcome their first child between now and the PGA Championship, throwing a giant variable into an equation that's producing perfect results right now. Scheffler is a family man and will surely want to be a very present and active father, so his life's about to change considerably. It'll be hugely rewarding on a personal level and it doesn't necessarily mean it will be bad for his golf. But it is fascinating that the best run we've seen since the Tiger days will be interrupted, or at least altered, by fatherhood.
15-year-olds aren't supposed to do that
Miles Russell has done (at least) four things that Tiger Woods, widely considered the best amateur golfer ever, never did. He won the Junior Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass at 14, youngest ever. He became the youngest male ever to win the AJGA Player of the Year award. He made the cut in this week's LECOM Suncoast Classic on the Korn Ferry Tour at 15, youngest ever. And he just became the youngest player ever to finish inside the top 25 on the PGA Tour or the Korn Ferry Tour.
Yes, Russell's opening-round 68 in Florida was the furthest thing from a fluke. He followed it up with a five-under 66 that saw him make the cut easily. On Saturday it seemed the clock might've struck midnight when he started four over for this first three holes. Most 15 year olds would pack it in after that in any tournament, let alone on the weekend of your first-ever time playing against pros. But Miles Russell is not most 15 year olds, so he played his final 14 holes in -5 to post a 70. He closed with 66 to finish T20 and earn a spot in next week's Veritex Bank Championship.
Because he is an amateur and under 18 years old he is not eligible for prize money or to accumulate points on the Korn Ferry Tour toward its season-long standings, but he can continue to play as an amateur so long as he keeps earning it with his play. As this video with Grant Horvat showed, the lefty is 15 going on 25.
"You're always nervous," he said. "So definitely the start of the round [I had nerves], but they kind of relaxed as we got kind of settled in and maybe a little bit more toward the end. But it was good.
"I just kind of try to go with the flow and take it as it comes to me and just try and stay cool."
Only he's not one of those 15 year olds who looks like he's 25. He looks like a 15 year old, and he will only continue to grow and get stronger as the next few years pan out. The question now is if this prodigy opts for the college golf route, as most top amateurs do this day given how polished the college system is, or if he'll follow in Akshay Bhatia's footsteps and turn pro straight out of high school. He's got three years to make that decision because, again, he's 15 years old. And just finished T20 on the Korn Ferry Tour. That's the real deal.
Elsewhere…
—Morgan Hoffmann held the 36-hole lead at the LECOM Suncoast Classic, and if you don't know Morgan's story, it's one of the wilder ones in golf. A few years ago I spent three unforgettable days with Morgan in the jungles of Costa Rica learning about the life he's build down there. In 2016, at the age of 27, doctors told him he had muscular dystrophy and that his body would wither away. Come back in a few years, they said, and they'll see if hey can keep him mobile. Western medicine told him there was nothing he could do. So he turned to eastern methods, moved to Costa Rica to cleanse his body and his mind, and seven years later he's still competing at an extremely high level.
—Billy Horschel won the Corales Puntacana Resort & Club Championship for his eighth PGA Tour victory and first since the 2022 Memorial Tournament. Wesley Bryan of the hugely popular YouTube channel Bryan Bros Golf held the 18-, 36- and 54-hole leads and closed with 68 for solo second. It's his best finish on Tour in seven years.
—LIV Golf is back in action this week in Adelaide, which looked to have the best atmosphere of any LIV event last year. It's at the Grange Golf Club again and there will be fully enclosed stands surrounding the par-3 12th, a setup they call the 'Watering Hole.' People will chug beers out of shoes. It's LIV's version of the WM Phoenix Open.
—This one surprised me: Gordon Sargent, the Vanderbilt junior and world No. 1 amateur, opted to return to Vanderbilt for his senior year rather than turn pro and immediately start playing on the PGA Tour. Sargent is the first player to get guaranteed PGA Tour status through the PGA Tour U accelerated program, a way for exceptional underclassmen to earn cards before they're seniors and eligible for the PGA Tour U standings. You have to clear 20 points to get the card, and you accumulate points by winning certain tournaments and making certain teams, and Sargent cleared the threshold midway through his junior year. So he could've turned pro at the end of this school year and started playing on the PGA Tour. But unlike team sports, where you gotta strike while your draft stock is high, Sargent's opportunity doesn't go away just because he's going back to school. He still gets PGA Tour status whenever he turns pro. So now he gets another year in college, playing with his teammates, some NIL money, another run at the U.S Amateur and then a PGA Tour card when he turns pro. Quite the setup.
—It's also team golf on the PGA Tour this week with the Zurich Classic. Two-man teams play two rounds of best ball and two rounds of alternate shot.
Until next week,
Dan