For every truly transcendent golfing talent, the chase for the career grand slam is the challenge of a lifetime.
This is partially by design. Winning each of golf’s four major championships — conquering the ghosts of Augusta National, the challenge of the U.S. Open, the rolling linksland of the Open Championship and the PGA Championship — requires a staggering blend of talent. Each major asks different questions, and requires different skills. You cannot win a career grand slam on the back of a great swing or a technological advantage alone. You must have talent and fortitude and good fortune and a heavy dose of artistry. Only the elite of the elite, the truly complete players, will finish the journey.
Scottie Scheffler is only halfway to the career grand slam. As you likely know, the World No. 1 has won at the Masters and the PGA Championship. Arguably the two most different major championships still stand between him and grand slam glory: the U.S. Open, annually the hardest test in golf, and the Open Championship, annually golf’s experiment with the mind-melding links version of the sport played in the U.K. and Ireland. Like all grand-slam hopefuls, Scheffler will need to find a new gear if he is to triumph at either of these majors.
But as he prepares for next week’s Open Championship with another links test, this week’s Genesis Scottish Open, Scheffler admitted he can break down the difference between his two remaining legs of the career slam quite simply. It all starts, he says, with his short game.
“When we’re in the States, if we’re practicing short game around the green, playing a practice round, I probably will use two clubs. I’ll use a 60-degree and a 56,” Scheffler said Wednesday. “Here, I’m bringing like five or six clubs, sometimes all the way down to an 8-iron.”
As Scheffler explained, the depth of the difference between links golf and U.S. Open golf can be found most obviously around the greens.
“Let’s compare the U.S. Open to the the Open Championship, two totally different types of challenges,” Scheffler said. “When you miss a green at the U.S. Open, you’re basically going to hit a similar type of shot each time where you’re just opening the face with a 60 and trying to play like a bunker shot to get the ball close to the hole, extremely difficult for anybody. It’s something that I would say nobody has really perfected how to do it.”
Shot variety is the essence of links golf. To be successful, you have to keep the ball low and rolling, and you have to be willing to work with what the land gives you. Wedge play, however, is where good links players separate from great ones. The same could be said at the U.S. Open, Scheffler says, but with a different application.
“You get over here and I miss a green, and I’m going to go over there and assess the lie,” Scheffler said. “Sometimes I may get a really clean lie and sometimes I may get a thick lie. With a thick lie I’ll have to do a more traditional open face with a 60, play like a bunker shot. Again, a clean lie, and I may be using an 8-iron to pitch up the slope or maybe a 50-degree depending how much pitch there is in the slope. Over here, there’s just more options, and it’s just a little bit of a different test than some of the tests we see at home.”
To players with Scheffler’s degree of shotmaking skill and creative ability, the difference between major venues is like flavors of ice cream.
Scheffler said Wednesday that he doesn’t have a favorite between the U.S. Open and Open Championship. “I like both styles of golf,” he said. “I love getting beat up at the U.S. Open. That’s a fun battle between us and the golf course. And coming over here, you get to do a lot of stuff I wouldn’t normally do.”
The best golfers are compartmentalizers — good at making big stuff feel small. For Scheffler, it’s only fitting the biggest challenge of his golfing life can be distilled down to a simple question: 56, or 60?
