Scottie Scheffler can use Tiger Woods, history as guide after latest dominant win

We ran out of ways to describe Scottie Scheffler’s dominance long ago.

Rory McIlroy can talk about his course management. Jordan Spieth can speak to his club-face control. Xander Schauffele can expound on Scheffler’s elite mentality. But there’s one truth: Scottie Scheffler has no equal in men’s professional golf and hasn’t for quite some time. The only thing that has even slowed his runaway freight train of greatness was a freak ravioli incident.

As Scheffler was lapping the field to defend his title at the Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village on Sunday, his only true counterpart was 431 miles away at Erin Hills, as Nelly Korda came up just short at the 2025 U.S. Women’s Open. Korda went on a blistering stretch last season that almost perfectly mirrored Scheffler’s, but even her reign on the LPGA has not reached the heights that Scheffler has on the PGA Tour. As Korda was failing to track down Maja Stark to reassert her dominance, Scheffler was busy easily taming Jack Nicklaus’ tough test and keeping Ben Griffin at arm’s length while the rest of golf’s best failed to make him sweat.

Nicklaus spent the weekend in the CBS broadcast booth watching Scheffler pick his way around his championship test. The 18-time major champion praised Scheffler for playing the game as he did in his prime — with methodical precision, an unbreakable confidence and a killer instinct.

“I think that great players are ones who rise to the occasion and ones who know how to play coming down the stretch in important events,” Nicklaus said. “Looking at the leaderboard today, he didn’t have — I mean, Ben Griffin’s a nice player, Sepp Straka is a nice player, Nick Taylor is a nice player. Those were all the guys that were there coming down the stretch. But he knows that those guys, you know, are not in his league.

“I always felt like, hey, you know, I got 144 guys or whatever it might be out there to play,” Nicklaus said later. “I’ve got to play well to beat ’em. Once I got myself into position, you know, to win, then you got to be smart about how you finish it. And that’s the way he’s playing. He reminds me so much of the way I like to play. I don’t think I played nearly as well as he played. He’s playing better than I played and more consistent. He’s just been playing fantastic, and I love watching him play.”

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With the rust from his ravioli absence knocked off, Scheffler has three wins and a T4 in his last four starts, including an emphatic victory at the PGA Championship. The feeling of inevitability that lorded over last season has returned, and now the only name that reaches the tongue when it comes to describing Scheffler’s dominance is, of course, Tiger Woods.

While Scheffler still has a long way to go to reach the extended levels of dominance that Woods exhibited during his prime, he continues to put himself in that rarified air.

Scheffler’s wins this season have come by eight, five and four shots. Per golf stats guru Justin Ray, the only players with three or more wins by four or more shots in the same PGA Tour season in the last 30 years are Woods and Scheffler, who both have achieved the feat twice. In defending his Memorial title, Scheffler now has three successful title defenses in his career (Players, WM Phoenix Open, Memorial). Only Woods (23) and Phil Mickelson (five) have more.

Woods was also the last player to successfully defend a title at Nicklaus’ tournament. Woods won the Memorial three consecutive times from 1999 to 2001. Scheffler will have a chance to match that feat next year.

As for what comes next, we can perhaps use history as our guide.

After Woods successfully defended his title at the Memorial in 2000, his next start came at the 2000 U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, which he won by 15 shots.

Scheffler’s next start? The 2025 U.S. Open at Oakmont.