Scottie Scheffler Wins His First Masters Championship

“I cried like a baby,” he said. “I was so overwhelmed.” Scheffler added that he told his wife, Meredith, “I don’t think I’m ready for this.”

Scheffler said he could not recall any previous episodes of self-doubt and attributed it to an understanding of how much winning the Masters would mean to him. “I’ve felt at peace on the golf course,” he said, laughing. “It’s off the course that’s hard for me. But I did a good job of keeping my concentration when playing. I calmed right down when I got to the golf course.”

For Scheffler, a New Jersey native who was raised in Texas, it was the fourth tour victory in his last six events, a stunning win percentage in a sport with tournament fields of more than 130 players.

In February, Scheffler won the Phoenix Open. A few weeks later, he finished first at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and, late last month, he won a World Golf Championships Match Play event. From the first win, it took Scheffler only 42 days to ascend to the No. 1 ranking.

Despite his recent successes, Scheffler has remained something of an unknown to casual sports fans because he had not won a tour event before this year. But there were signs last season that Scheffler was beginning to find his rhythm at the upper level of men’s competitive golf. In the last three majors of that season, he finished tied for eighth at the British Open, tied for seventh at the U.S. Open and tied for eighth at the P.G.A. Championship.

Scheffler, like Smith, is one of a new generation of younger golfers who are becoming frequent tour winners. The top seven golfers in the men’s world golf rankings are 30 or younger.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/sports/golf/masters-scheffler-smith-mcilroy.html