Scottie Scheffler, hot drivers and 1990’s R&B: 50 thoughts on the PGA

DREAMING OF SUFFOLK PUNCH’S BREAKFAST BOWL, N.Y. — Who’s Scottie Scheffler like? 

The comparison exercise can be both lovable and loathable, right? Relatability helps us understand — he hits like him, she putts like her and so on and so on, all the way until things make a bit more sense. On a less profound note, it makes for fun bar talk, too. Anyways, in the case of Scheffler, your 2025 PGA Championship champion, he sees your pressure and raises it … kinda like Woods. His game can travel everywhere … kinda like Nicklaus’. 

Then there’s the thought of the path he’ll follow in the coming years, and, conveniently, three models have come recently. Will he be like … Woods, who followed major wins with more major wins? Will he be like … Jordan Speith, who followed major wins with what is now a lengthy search? Or will he be like … Rory McIlroy, who’s somewhat of a combo of the two, with his major ascent, descent and recent resurrection.   

But maybe we’re seeing something … new.

He’s a dad-joke liker and a submission specialist straight out of the UFC. He’s a funky swinger who seemingly has taken the flukiness out of chip-ins. Does he have competitive fire? “Uh, yeah,” he said Sunday night, then laughed. Does he compartmentalize it, though? Uh, yeah, that, too. That ginormous Wanamaker Trophy? It’ll reside in what he calls his “golf room.” What does it look like in there? “I’d like to say that it’s nicely presented, but it’s not.”

Scottie Scheffler, ladies and gentlemen.

As we look back at the PGA Championship week that was at Quail Hollow Club, let’s make that observation No. 1 then. We’ll try for 49 more, and, to help the mood, we’ll mix in some music from a few of Charlotte’s best musicians.

2. Kyle Porter, who runs the Normal Sport golf website, tweeted this weekend that Scheffler reminds him of Tim Duncan. That’s a good one.

3. On Sunday night on Golf Channel, analyst Paul McGinley touted Scheffler’s rebound ability, though not in the Duncan sense, and that’s a good thought, too. Nowhere was that better seen than Saturday, when Scheffler bogeyed the par-3 13th at Quail Hollow, then finished eagle — with maybe the shot of the tournament — birdie, par, birdie, birdie. 

4. There was also Sunday’s bounce back. A bogey on 9 was followed by three-under-par golf over the next eight holes.

5. Credit Ted Scott with the assist on Sunday. (Is he Tony Parker then?) Before the back-nine run, Scheffler had been fighting a left miss off the tee, and he was perplexed, though not frustrated. “Kind of what I reminded myself at the turn is — I had a bite to eat,” Scheffler said. “And I told myself, if I keep making good swings, I’m not going to continue to hit the ball left every time, statistically speaking.” 

A short thought from Scott helped, though. 

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“Like, 7, 8, 9, I felt like I hit the shots really solid and it was coming out left,” Scheffler said. “And I told Teddy walking up 9 tee, I was like, ‘That one felt pretty good. I don’t know why that was left again.”

“He was like, ‘Well, maybe you’re aimed over there. Just try and hit a little further right.”

And that was that. 

6. Scheffler has a sneaky good sense of humor, and we might have gotten something special in his Sunday night press conference, had he not refrained. The potential joke was raised in this exchange between him and a reporter, with the reporter’s question in italics:

Scottie, given what you went through last year in Louisville, is this even sweeter?

“I mean, it’s definitely very sweet sitting here with the trophy,” Scheffler said. “I definitely have a few jokes that I want to say that I’m probably going to keep to myself.”

Go for it.

“That’s not a good idea.”

7. Speaking of, this was good. 

8. This was good, too. The Athletic’s Gabby Herzig and Brody Miller talked to the officer involved in last year’s incident, and you can read that story by clicking here. 

9. The image of the tournament, though, will be Scheffler’s young son, Bennett, sitting on the ground in the scoring room as his dad signed his card.

10. This was also good. 

11. And this was good. 

12. So what’s the over-under on major wins for Scheffler’s career? He’s at three now. He turns 29 on June 21. 

Let’s go with 8.5. Only six golfers have won eight or more. 

13. What’s the over-under on major wins for Scheffler … this year? He’s at one now. 

Let’s set the number at one. 

14. Gimme Bryson DeChambeau at the U.S. Open at Oakmont. 

15. Gimme Justin Thomas at the Open Championship at Royal Portrush. 

16. But remember I picked McIlroy to win the PGA.

17. Music break! According to ranker.com, the best Charlotte musician or music group is … FireHouse. (According to Wikipedia, the band started in Richmond, Va., before moving to Charlotte, but we’ll let it slide.) If you’ve ever attended a middle-school dance, you’re familiar with FireHouse’s No. 1 song. 

18. Now that that will be in your head for the next month, let’s talk about McIlroy, whom we didn’t hear from after his pre-tournament press conference on Wednesday. 

No, athletes don’t have to talk to reporters after wins, losses and all of the results in between — that is, if they don’t want fans to know the who, what, when, where, why and how. Press conferences and such are the forum for that. Granted, some fans are entertained just by the action. But the story adds context.

One session skip is OK. Maybe two. But four is a bad look, especially for someone as popular as McIlroy. 

19. Wouldn’t you be curious to know why he struggled this week on a course where he’s won four times? Was it nerves? Was it a Masters hangover? Was it … his driver?

20. OK, let’s talk about Drivergate. (I don’t like using ‘gates,’ but it plays.) We learned that McIlroy was playing a new driver head this week, and the word was his old had failed testing. Testing? According to Kerry Haigh, the PGA of America’s chief championships officer, a third of the drivers in the field were tested, as they are at other events. And why are they tested? For rules conformance. After a while, driver faces can get springy. 

Why is this a big deal? Some folks started to wonder how long McIlroy’s potential hot driver was in play, and I’ll let my esteemed colleague Michael Bamberger address that. In a story published on Sunday on this site, he wrote: Nothing here suggests in any way that McIlroy used a nonconforming driver when he won the Masters. It is almost impossible to imagine that a player would willfully use a nonconforming club. It would violate every principle this game is supposed to stand for.”

Bamberger then wrote that he believed a potential solution would be to test the drivers of the top 10 players on Sunday morning, in addition to the testing already in place. I like that. 

21. One player did reveal that his driver failed testing. 

Scheffler. 

Was his new driver head the reason behind his left miss?

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“No. I think that was my fault,” he said Sunday, laughing.  

22. All of the hot driver talk got me thinking back to my youth baseball days, when I’d see kids pound Easton bats against the supports of the dugout fence to get more spring. 

It helped some. Some, meanwhile, couldn’t hit the ball even if it were on a tee. I’ll let you decide which group I was in.  

23. Let’s talk Jon Rahm. He could also win at Oakmont. 

He also had the quote of the tournament. 

“I always like to go back a little bit on something that Charles Barkley likes to remind basketball players all the time. Like, I play golf for a living. It’s incredible. Am I embarrassed a little bit about how I finished today? Yeah. But I just need to get over it, get over myself. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not like I’m a doctor or a first responder, where somebody if they have a bad day, truly bad things happen.

“I’ll get over it. I’ll move on. Again, there’s a lot more positive than negative to think about this week. I’m really happy I put myself in position and hopefully learn from this and give it another go in the U.S. Open.”

24. Let’s talk about the underdogs. Well done on your top-10s, Harris English (150-1 odds before the tournament, according to golfodds.com), Davis Riley (500-1), Jhonattan Vegas (500-1), Ryan Gerard (150-1) and Joe Highsmith (150-1).

25. Let’s talk about the favorites. What happened to Jordan Spieth, Sepp Straka, Shane Lowry, Hideki Matsuyama, Ludvig Aberg, Justin Thomas, Patrick Cantlay, Jason Day, Cameron Smith, Brooks Koepka and Justin Rose? All missed the cut. 

26. Whew, that’s a lot of big names not to see the weekend? Did it diminish the tournament? 

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No, in my opinion. I like the long shots, or more specifically, their stories. Did their lack of major-contending experience lead to Scheffler’s move? Maybe. Would more stars have made things more compelling? Perhaps.  

But it’s not like a bunch of 15-handicaps were playing out there. If anything, the depth of talent was showcased, and that further underscored just how hard it is to win a major — because everyone’s freaking good. 

27. Where do I stand on Quail Hollow? I liked it. I liked the strong finish. I liked the drivable par-4s. I liked that the best player was identified. 

28. But I thought this Twitter thread, started by GOLF’s Zephyr Melton, was also good. 

29. Welcome back to contention, Max Homa. And thanks for letting us listen in to your process. This exchange was good, with the reporter’s question in italics:

I’ve often considered you one of the better explainers of things in this sport, and I’m curious if, as the scores aren’t matching the feels or the feels with your coach are not matching what he’s seeing, has any of this been particularly hard to explain to people?

“Yeah, a lot of it has been,” Homa said. “Especially with my wife. She’ll ask me on days at home, like how was today? I’ll say great, and we’ll leave the next day and shoot a zillion. She doesn’t get it.

“It’s hard to explain because I don’t — I can give you the technical version of all of it, but at the end of the day, it is odd. I’ll play some really good practice rounds. Waste Management in particular was probably the best I’ve ever driven the ball in my life, and even in the first round on Thursday, I think I shot six- or seven-over. It’s just a hard game.

“I heard Matt Fitzpatrick was doing an interview, and he explained it. The week he’s driven the ball well, it seemed like he’s putted awful or he hit his irons awful. And the weeks he’s ironed it great or putted great, he’s driven it awful. It is hard to explain.

“The technical is that it just gets faster when you play. The positions I’ve been in and the club being behind me, I can figure it out here and there and get into grooves, and if a feel gets going, I can repeat it a lot. But you start getting nervous, trees on the left, trees on the right, water, whatever, certain winds, it just — it messes with all — you don’t want a lot of timing in your golf swing. People wonder why Scottie is so amazing. He doesn’t have a lot of timing. He’s incredibly athletic and aware of where the golf club is, and I have not been. So when you get under stress and things, it just doesn’t become as easy as — I call it field practice when you’re on a range where you hit a bad one and rake another one over and just try to time it a little better.

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“It has been hard to explain, but at the end of the day, there’s also been bad days at home. So it’s not like it’s completely foreign when I show up to a golf tournament. Didn’t feel mental. It just was a little bit of mental with a lack of confidence mixed with a golf swing that wasn’t super repeatable.”

30. This was good, too:

It’s always been your way to be very transparent and let people in, which is rare for a lot of athletes, professionals. Do you find that that helps you? Is it almost therapeutic to some degree to let people in rather than — you know, with your feelings and stuff like that — rather than shutting everything out and keeping it inside?

“No, it probably doesn’t help me at all, if I’m being honest. I don’t know, I grew up a fan of sports, as so many are, and I always found it really — like interviews and things to be so thought provoking as a fan to get a little insight. Like I said, we are entertainers, and without the fans, we would be just playing golf with some buddies.

“Yeah, I just try to be myself. Yeah, sometimes I wish I would probably keep some things in, but at the end of the day, we owe a lot to them. It’s not so hard to be transparent. It doesn’t hurt me in any way.”

31. Music break! According to ranker.com, the second-best Charlotte musician or music group is … Jodeci. Fans of 1990s R&B, such as potentially the author of this article, know them well. Here’s one of their hits. 

32. I think Michael Block is great, and I hope he plays in future PGAs. He’s a showman, and golf needs those. I don’t understand the dislike. 

33. Speaking of club pros, this story on Rupe Taylor, written by Golf Digest’s Joel Beall, was good. 

34. One more on Homa. This was a controlled club throw. 

35. This club throw, by Wyndham Clark, was not, and Monday, on social media, he apologized. 

36. Mud balls were another topic this week, after the PGA said lift, clean and place wouldn’t be in play. Some pros were bothered by the call. Some thought it was fine, like Padraig Harrington. Speaking to Bamberger on the subject, he said this:

“When I got on the European Tour, I heard it now and again, but not until I came here did I hear it more. I actually thought we were going to have to play lift, clean and place today, but in hindsight, we definitely didn’t need it. There were maybe a very few areas that they could have marked for relief — maybe. Two or three. Five. The golf course in general recovered beautifully.

“Generally, when I’ve got mud on the ball, I am playing the most conservative shot I can play. If the mud is on the ball at 3 o’clock, I play the ball to go left. If you actually are going to catch mud on the face on your shot, it’s going to take spin off it.

“If you’ve got a long second shot and there’s mud on your ball, I’ll sometimes just hood the club, hit something along the ground to the front of the green and that will clean the mud off the ball and the ball’s clean for the next shot.

“It’s a different kind of skill, playing mud balls, but it’s part of the skill of the game.

“It’s like playing in bad weather. Fifty percent of the guys are going to give up in bad weather. Of the remaining half, half don’t know how to play in bad weather. So now you only have to beat one-quarter of the original field.”

37. Speaking of Harrington, this tip was good. 

38. This photo was good. 

39. This video was good. 

40. This video was good, too. 

41. Music break! According to ranker.com, the third-best Charlotte musician or music group is … K-Ci and JoJo, who were two of the four members of Jodeci, mentioned in observation No. 31. (K-Ci and JoJo were actually ranked No. 4, but the singer at No. 3, Coko, didn’t have a Charlotte connection, according to Wikipedia.) Here’s one of K-Ci and JoJo’s hits. 

42. Here are a few of my favorite reads this week from the GOLF.com staff. From my batch, I talked with Dr. Bob Rotella, McIlroy’s sports psychologist. 

43. From Sean Zak, a look at Rahm was a favorite. 

44. From James Colgan, a look at ESPN’s Jeff Darlington, the reporter who witnessed Scheffler’s arrest, was a favorite. 

45. From Josh Schrock, a look at Scheffler’s third round was a favorite. 

46. From Bamberger, a look at on-edge pros was a favorite. 

47. From Johnny Wunder, a look at DeChambeau’s gear was a favorite. 

48. Our “Seen and Heard” franchise is excellent. You can watch the PGA Championship episodes here and here. 

49. I also loved this.

50. A word on the dateline at the top of this article. 

I worked from the home office for the PGA, but I’m a Charlotte fan, after having gone there for the 2022 Presidents Cup. And a lasting memory was the meal I had on the Monday after the event, at Suffolk Punch Brewing. 

I wrote this at the time:

The Suffolk Punch SPB Breakfast Bowl — with two farm eggs my way (scrambled is my way), Anson Mills cream cheese grits, smoked bacon, sausage patties, shredded cheddar and grilled sourdough bread — is one of the better breakfasts I’ve maybe ever had. 

The opinion hasn’t changed.  

Editor’s note: The author also wrote 50 observations from the Masters, and that story can be found here.