For Rory McIlroy, things didn’t add up. He seemingly had done the math.
Last year, Scottie Scheffler earned over $29 million in PGA Tour prize money, right? Check.
Over his career, he’s up to $71 million, which puts him third on the Tour’s all-time list, behind just Tiger Woods and McIlroy himself, right? Check.
And Scheffler hurt himself — cooking ravioli at Christmas? Also check.
The news stunned when it started to circulate on Dec. 27. Scheffler, the world No. 1 and a nine-time winner last year, punctured his right hand with glass and needed surgery, his manager, Blake Smith, said. He’d also need to miss tournament play.
He missed four events. This week, at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Scheffler is back. During his time away, he said he reflected some, an exercise he said he rarely does. “I just really wanted to jog my memory,” Scheffler said earlier this month. “And since I wasn’t able to play golf, I tried to almost train a little bit at home where I was reminding my brain of what I was feeling over certain shots and how my hands felt on the club and stuff like that. So I wasn’t, you know, totally checking out from golf, if that makes sense.”
But after hearing about the injury, McIlroy had a question on Tuesday in his pre-Pebble press conference.
He was wondering about the dinner prep. And the money made.
“I think he made enough money to hire a chef,” McIlroy cracked. “It’s like why are you cooking yourself?
“I was hoping it was going to be more of a fun story than that. We were together in Vegas on the 17th of December and played that match with Brooks and Bryson. Firstly, just concern and hope he was OK. It sounds like he is. It’s good that he’s teeing it up this week.
“Yeah, get a chef.”
Should you be curious, Scheffler later said he does have one. It’s his wife, Meredith. “She’s pretty cute,” he said.
On a slightly more serious note, McIlroy was also asked what he felt stood out in Scheffler’s 2024 campaign, outside of the basic statistics. It was an engaging question, as it gives you a bit of a window into what McIlroy values.
“I’ve never — this is anyone, this is Tiger, this is in the history of golf — I don’t think I’ve ever seen a golfer play as many bogey-free rounds as Scottie,” McIlroy said. “He just doesn’t make mistakes. It’s so impressive. He plays the right shot at the right time over and over and over again. You obviously need the technical ability to be able to do that, but he doesn’t make mistakes. And when you don’t make mistakes on the golf course, the game can become pretty easy.
“So super impressive. If he continues to do that, he’s going to be the dominant force that he was last year and the year before that.”
But is McIlroy right? On the stats page on the PGA Tour’s website, bogey-free rounds are not listed, though in looking at 2024, golf stats guru Justin Ray tweeted on Aug. 15 that Xander Schauffele had carded his Tour-best 19th bogey-free round, which was five better than Scheffler, the next-best pro in the category. (From that point, over 12 rounds, Schauffele and Scheffler posted three more bogey-free scorecards, though two of Scheffler’s came at the Hero World Challenge.)
Still, Scheffler’s bogey-free play is impressive. Below is a look at where the rounds were played.
– Sentry round 1, Jan. 4
– American Express round 2, Jan. 19
– American Express round 4, Jan. 21
– AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am round 2, Feb. 2
– WM Phoenix Open round 2, Feb. 9
– Arnold Palmer Invitational round 4, March 10
– Players Championship, round 4, March 17
– Texas Children’s Houston Open round 1, March 28
– Masters round 1, April 11
– RBC Heritage round 2, April 19
– RBC Heritage round 3, April 20
– Charles Schwab Challenge round 2, May 24
– Charles Schwab Challenge round 3, May 25
– Travelers Championship round 4, June 23
– FedEx St. Jude Championship round 2, Aug. 16
– Hero World Challenge round 2, Dec. 6
– Hero World Challenge round 4, Dec. 8
“It’s a simple way to put it,” Scheffler said, “but I think having superior control of my golf ball is what enabled me to not make a lot of mistakes. That’s like having a good feel where my swing’s at so I know how to manage my way around the course, playing the appropriate shot. I made plenty of mistakes, but I think it’s more about managing where the miss is. And when I have a really good feel where the club is as I did for a lot of last season, I’m able to really work my way around the golf course.
“It’s a lot simpler than just not making a mistake. It’s easy to say play it to the middle of the green, but at the end of the day, you’ve got to hit the shots. I think at times last year I just had really good control of my ball and that’s how I was able to avoid the mistakes.”
There is also this: On July 25, Ray shared that Lydia Ko had posted her 131st bogey-free round since the start of the 2014 season — and the next-closest pro over that period (Lizette Salas) was at 84. (To finish the season, Ko posted seven more bogey-free rounds — the first, second and fourth rounds of the Kroger Queen City Championship, the first and second rounds of the BMW Ladies Championship, the third round of the Annika, and the fourth round of the CME Group Tour Championship.)
