NORTH BERWICK, Scotland — There once was a time when Scottie Scheffler and Jon Rahm competed against each other constantly. Think back to the spring of 2023, when Scheffler and Rahm were trading wins on the PGA Tour, and the latter snatched the World’s Best Golfer title from the former.
(What a lovely time that was.)
Rahm was then in the middle of a Tour-best 25-straight cuts-made streak that expired only because he had to withdraw from the Players Championship with an illness. Scottie Scheffler won that week, by five. In the process, Scheffler made the weekend for the 11th-straight time, and until this week here at the Genesis Scottish Open, he had played every weekend of every one of his starts since. All 67 tournaments between then and now, amounting to a total of 78 straight cuts made, a run that came to an end when he didn’t birdie the 9th hole at Renaissance Club Friday afternoon.
So … why are we talking about Jon Rahm? Because Scheffler and Rahm are two titans of the game. They may have taken divergent paths since that 2023 season, but this duo can speak to sustaining a competitive baseline as high as anyone else in the world. And more to that point, while Scheffler slumped toward an even-par finish, it was Rahm who climbed back with a second-round 65 to make the cut on the number. He gets two more rounds of tournament prep before next week’s Open Championship. Scheffler does not. And Rahm was surprised to hear about it.
“He missed the cut?” Rahm asked, sounding baffled when I told him the news.
“When it comes to Scottie, it’s not the fact that he hasn’t missed cuts,” Rahm added. “It seemed that every single week he had a chance to win.
“Sometimes you can make the cut and just simply finish 40th and you’re not in the equation of the tournament. It seemed like he was always in the hunt. Like no matter what, come Sunday, the back nine, even if it was an outside chance, he was there with a chance. That was the most impressive part. Including the majors and elevated events. Yeah, it’s incredible.”
It’s true, and while most of the golf world may know it, it bears repeating. Scheffler’s cuts-made streak ended Friday, as did his equally stunning top-25 streak, at 37. The last time Scheffler finished outside the top 25 was 23 months ago at the 2024 BMW Championship. Coming into that week he had won three of his previous five starts. He would win his next two starts. The MC looks like an anomaly now and felt like an anomaly then, but that week of golf at elevation in Colorado, Scheffler finished T33.
What Scheffler’s early departure means for the best golfer in the world isn’t much besides an earlier trip down to Royal Birkdale, on the west coast of England, for next week’s Open. One of the last things Scheffler was asked to do Friday was to speak to the press. I asked him if he was proud of that cuts-made streak, which plenty of the golf world, including the talking head on Friday’s broadcast, will obsess about. The streak may not mean what it once did, as plenty of tournaments in recent years have been held without a cut, but did it still mean something to Scheffler that he always made the weekend?
Perhaps unsurprisingly, he held the same view as Rahm.
“Yeah, it’s a little different now with some of the Signature Events not having cuts,” Scheffler said. “But you know, I don’t think I finished outside of the top 20 or something like that many times this year.
“I’m definitely proud of the consistency, and wish I had a couple days over the weekend to make up some ground. But overall, get down to Birkdale a little earlier than expected and get used to a new course.”
