Scottie Scheffler’s generational greatness on display in PGA Championship victory, his third major championship title

CHARLOTTE, N.C. – Scottie Scheffler settled into a familiar spot on Quail Hollow’s range, a few paces from where he began his pre-round practice session a day earlier. He’s a man of routine, stringent and finicky about very little, but his preparation is among the things he doesn’t mess about.

The hot Carolinas sun beat down on the Texan, who seemed immune to anything. Weather? He’s played in much warmer. Pressure? He felt some, but to prescribe any of it to history, legacy or his place in the game is misguided. The competition? They feel his presence far more than he’s aware of them.

A crowded grandstand looked on. As did a gaggle of reporters and cameras, their notepads and camera lenses trained on him. History was about to unfold over the next several hours. It always does on major championship Sundays, and Scheffler was the main event. Major No. 3 was in his sights, the second leg of the career Grand Slam – weighty, career-defining accomplishments. None of that appeared to be on Scheffler’s mind, robotic as he moved through his range session. He began like like he always does, taking swings with an old 7-iron with a molded grip that serves as an initial check of his fundamentals. From there he checked his ball position. Ball after ball, Scheffler worked through his checklist.

Grip? Check. Feet? Check. Swing. Grip? Check. Feet? Check. Swing. Scheffler arrived at the first tee 15 minutes later. Same thing. Grip? Check. Feet? Check. Swing. Grip? Check. Feet? Check. Bombs away. Fairway hit.

A pattern has developed around Scheffler as he’s elevated himself to the top of the sport. It’s something the game’s true forces of nature possessed. Tiger Woods had it. Jack Nicklaus had it. They possess their own gravity when they’re atop a leaderboard, pulling down those around by their presence alone. It speeds their competitors up, forces them to take on shots they wouldn’t and misplay shots that would normally be routine. All the while, Scheffler is peppering flags with ease, like he’s banging balls in a pre-round range session with no stakes involved.

Scheffler had shaky moments Sunday, sure. He led Jon Rahm by five shots to start the day yet found himself tied with Rahm after nine holes. Lesser golfers might crumble. But Scheffler elevated, shooting a back-nine 34 and letting everyone else stumble around him. So by the time Scheffler walked to the 18th green, tapped in for bogey, threw his hat on the ground and screamed to the heavens, his winning margin was five shots for his first PGA Championship victory.

“It’s a hard thing to appreciate because it’s not a very tangible thing, is it?” Phil Kenyon, Scheffler’s putting coach, told PGATOUR.COM. “You can look at his swing or his footwork, Rory’s power, grace and balance. Those are tangible things that you see that make them special. But you don’t necessarily see the inner workings of the mind on TV. That’s what makes Scottie really great.”

Scheffler is a singular force. Other players can reach similar highs – Rory McIlroy at the Masters, for example – but none do it with the precision or ease of Scheffler. McIlroy’s Sunday at Augusta National was a topsy-turvy journey of self-immolation and athletic triumph. A rollercoaster ride that looked fun for nobody involved until the final putt dropped.

Scheffler’s wins look inevitable, like if they played the final round 100 different times that he would find a way to win them all. In this playing of the final round, Scheffler was pushed. He fought his swing on the front nine, made the turn in a wobbly 2-over 37, and watched as a fellow two-time major winner in Rahm charged up the leaderboard. But if anything, Rahm’s charge ignited Scheffler. He saw they were tied walking off the ninth green. Then he birdied the 10th to retake the lead, parred the difficult stretch of 11, 12 and 13 and added birdies on 14 and 15 to seal it.

“Time and time again when people get close, he seems to be able to step on the gas,” said Ted Scott, Scheffler’s caddie. “He just has that ability to be like, ‘Oh, no, you're not coming after me, bud.’”

Scheffler did it at last year’s Masters, neck and neck with Collin Morikawa and Ludvig Åberg around the turn. Scheffler just kept hitting quality golf shots and waited for the other two to fall away and win it for him. Morikawa did at the ninth hole, leaving a shot in the bunker en route to a double bogey. And Åberg did when he found the water on the 11th.

Sunday at Quail Hollow was similar. As Scheffler stayed level-headed, those around him fell away. Rahm bogeyed the 16th as Scheffler looked on across the lake in the 15th fairway. Then Rahm compounded the error, his tee shots finding the water on the 17th and 18th holes to close with a pair of double bogeys, seven shots back of Scheffler. Alex Noren, who began the day just three back of Scheffler, shot a back-nine 40 and finished eight back.

“He has a lot of this (pointing to his heart), but he’s got a brain to drive it,” said Randy Smith, Scheffler’s coach since childhood. “Sometimes you have a great heart but you don’t have the common sense to do the right thing at the right time.”

The win gives a leg up to Scheffler on the rest of his generation. While he’s unquestionably been the most consistent golfer over the last three years, the one statistic that trumps all others is majors. Scheffler began the week with two, as did pretty much every other top player that has a case as the best of this latest crop of stars – Rahm, DeChambeau, Morikawa, Xander Schauffele and Justin Thomas.

Scheffler owned more Player of the Year awards than the rest of them. His Olympic gold medal is only matched by Schauffele, who did it four years earlier. None of them had ever displayed dominance like Scheffler’s 2024 season. His nine worldwide wins were more than Morikawa’s career win total (seven). But the majors are where professional golfers’ legacies are defined.

Schauffele was the latest to make the charge – nabbing his two in the last 12 months. DeChambeau outdueled McIlroy in that legendary final round at Pinehurst No. 2 to win the U.S. Open last year and claim his second, and he factored heavily at this year’s Masters before a back-nine collapse. Thomas returned this week to Quail Hollow, the site of his first major title in 2017, with a recent win in his back pocket. Meanwhile, Morikawa and Rahm entered searching for the win that would put their frustrations to rest. Both were on professional runs that mere mortals would love to have, but the elite of the elite find disappointing.

At points this week, it looked like DeChambeau or Rahm could nudge ahead. Even before Sunday, Rahm made an early charge in the third round, forcing himself into the conversation as Scheffler and others were stagnant midway through the day. Those details were largely irrelevant 40 minutes later when Scheffler navigated the final five holes – including the treacherous "Green Mile" – in 5-under. Though it happened Saturday, it was the tournament-defining, championship-winning stretch that displayed all of Scheffler’s wondering brilliance.

He hit it to 2 feet at the drivable 304-yard par-4 14th, added another birdie at 15, then dispatched of the Green Mile – the three toughest holes on the course – in 2-under. And it could have been better. He split the fairway at the 16th, then hit his best shot – his words – in the closing troika, a sidehill 7-iron from 198 yards that settled 12 feet below the hole. He missed the putt, a break in his onslaught that lasted all of a few minutes.

His tee shot on the par-3 17th dropped 15 feet from the pin, and he holed the birdie. It seemed the 18th might trip him up when his tee ball rolled into a divot. Scheffler’s first round was derailed by a stroke of bad luck – a clump of mud on the ball that caused his approach shot into the 16th to take a devilish left turn and sink into the water hazard, leading to double bogey. There would be no such opening Saturday, Scheffler easily clipping the ball from the divot and stopping it within 9 feet for a closing birdie.

And just like that, Scheffler vanquished his peers who, only an hour earlier, thought they had a shot at surpassing him this week and in the pantheon of modern golf. Suddenly, Rahm trailed by five shots instead of three, and DeChambeau was a distant six shots back.

“I don't see Scottie bobbling it,” Matt Fitzpatrick said Saturday night.

He didn’t.

Scheffler is now three-for-three in converting 54-hole leads at majors into victories. He is just the eighth golfer to win three majors in the last 30 years, joining Vijay Singh, Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson, Tiger Woods, Jordan Spieth, Brooks Koepka and Rory McIlroy.

And with 15 PGA TOUR wins and three majors, he joins Woods and Nicklaus as the only players to hit those benchmarks before age 29.

And if you want to get crazy, the career Grand Slam is within reach this season. Now two legs into the historic quartet, the other two – the U.S. Open and The Open Championship – will play out over the next two months. It’ll be a shock if Scheffler enters either one as anything other than the favorite.

“I felt like this was as hard as I battled for a tournament in my career. This was a pretty challenging week,” Scheffler said Sunday night, the Wanamaker Trophy on the table next to him. "I played with it a little bit more than I would have liked to … but I stepped up when we needed to, and it was a pretty special week.”

That’s what should feel deflating for the rest of the PGA TOUR. Scheffler didn’t play great by his standards, but he doesn’t need to. He just needs to be around at the end to let his gravity do the work.

“What stood out to me the most? Nothing really,” Sam Burns said Sunday.

To be clear, that was a compliment. Because what he saw out of Scheffler at Quail Hollow this week is the same player he sees all the time. Whether it’s on the 18th green of a major championship or the practice range back home at Royal Oaks, it's always the same Scheffler. Therein lies his greatness.

“The way he plays is a byproduct of a lot of other things that people don’t see,” Burns said. “When it’s time to go play, he can play freely because he’s done everything he needs to do to play well.”