By: Rylan Galante
What an amazing start to the golf season. Scottie Scheffler has been unbelievable the last couple of years and hasn't slowed down. He has won three tournaments this year with the players tournament Arnold Palmer and now the Masters. Scottie is 27 years old now and just entering his prime. He has won two masters tournaments in the last three years. He won this year's masters by 4 strokes. In the last 4 tournaments, he has won three and tied for second in one; in this week's RBC Heritage tournament, Scottie is currently up by 4 strokes with 3 holes left that they will play on Monday due to bad weather. So he will win this tournament as well. Now, looking back at the masters, Scottie was in contention the whole tournament and didn't make mistakes. He won 3.5 million winning the masters and has made 15 million this year already. That is insane to think about.
During the master's tournament, his wife was expecting their first kid any day and couldn't make the trip. He actually said, “If she goes into labor, I will drop out of the tournament.” This shows that family is first for him, and golf is just his job. Throughout the tournament, he showed dominance and was always in his zone, never smiling or getting mad. Just stay calm and relaxed. I like to think he is the best talent since Tiger Woods. He still has a long way to go, but with this start to his career, he could make himself a very good career. That said, he has only won at one major tournament course so far, Augusta. He still hasn't won the U.S. Open, The Open, and the PGA championship. Now, I want to talk about his very unusual swing with the lower half of his body. You can see his back foot slip on his downswing, which is something that just naturally happens for him. But he really still has a great swing and doesnt need to change anything. The positives of his swing are that he is getting all his weight forward and getting good weight transitioning. With this, there is no way he can chunk a shot or hit the ground early. If anything, he would hit the ball a bit thin, which is fine in his case. You can see that he uses every muscle to hit the ball, which works really well. At the start of the year, he struggled with his putting and switched from a blade putter to a mallet, which was all he needed. After that, he has put lights out and has pretty much just won. What is not talked about enough is his mental game. He is always in his zone, and even after hitting a bad shot, he knows he can still par or birdie and shoot a good round. He never gets too high or too low. This is very important for all golfers; having a good mental game will shave off strokes. In this week's tournament, he has been exposed and is very tired from everything happening with his wife and the baby being due any day. He also shanked a chip from the sand, which is a great example of how even the best don't hit the ball perfectly every time, but he kept calm and still could score well and not let that shot get to him.
Another thing about Scottie is that he has stayed consistent with everything he has done and has had the same swing coach since he was 7 years old. I know people and coaches have told him he needs to change his swing and he won't be any good with that kind of swing. But he and his coach believed in him, and look where he is now at the top and has been at the top for years and has been ranked the number one golfer in the world for over 80 weeks now, over a year and a half.