You wouldn’t compare bananas to kumquats just because they’re both fruits, right?
But comparing golfers from different generations? It’s done excessively, layers and layers of silliness piled up and sometimes adorned with emojis of a certain barnyard animal. Call it a byproduct of the social media world in which we’re entrapped, but a whole lot of people think it makes sense to see apples as oranges.
It does not.
Should you be thinking we must be at the intersection of Tiger Woods and Scottie Scheffler, you’re correct. Given that Scheffler has reeled off wins in three of his last four tournaments – including his first PGA Championship and third major – there is a serious buzz about the 28-year-old from Dallas. It’s just a shame that so much of it revolves around numbers that are barely digested and enjoyed before they are jammed into a blender to see where they stack up against “what Tiger did.”
The tale of the tape stuff will surely intensify should Scheffler continue his marvelous play and given that we’ve got two major stages – the U.S. Open and Open Championship – in the next six weeks, get ready for more comparisons, fair or unfair.
And CBS’ Dottie Pepper is squarely a member of the latter club.
“You should only compare players from their own generations,” she said, “and Tiger and Scottie are a generation apart. Rory (McIlroy) is sort of stuck in the middle; he started when Tiger was still competing and now here he is playing against Scottie.”
Pepper was out there during Tiger’s prime and knows the sort of mind-bending numbers that speak to the man’s legend: He won his first start in a major as a pro by 12 strokes, he once won four straight majors, and by the time he had played in 137 PGA Tour tournaments he had 38 victories.
Scheffler in 137 PGA Tour tournaments has 16 wins, three of them majors, but considering that he didn’t win any of his first 66 starts, ask yourself this: How good is winning 16 of your last 71 starts?
People can throw out there that Woods completed the career grand slam in his first four major wins (1997 Masters, 1999 PGA, 2000 U.S. Open, 2000 Open Championship). Others can remind of Scheffler’s being the here and now and starting to impose his aura, a winner nine straight times with the 54-hole lead.
But all the comparisons in numbers are, well, “it’s lazy, actually,” said Pepper.
She is quality, Pepper is. That she can have great respect for the Woods legacy and at the same time admire what Sheffler is constructing week in and week out without fretting about how their success compares against one another is a tribute to her golf IQ.
It is possible, she knows, to get so caught up in comparing players from different generations that you don’t grasp the substance of the Scheffler story that has so many flavorful slices. When asked about him, Pepper’s first observation is a great one: “There is a joy to him. He’s a player who generally likes people.” Then, a pause, and she adds: "The stability in his life is there on so many levels."
Chalk it up to a foundation that is easy to appreciate. With three sisters who had their own busy lives and athletic interests; a mother who was a COO of a large law firm (“She managed 50 partners with 50 egos,” said Rocky Hambric, the man who met the Scheffler family more than 20 years ago and whose company manages Scottie Scheffler. “Yeah, Scottie gets a lot of his competitive fire from Diane”) and a stay-at-home dad, Scott, who kept it all in order, there was one thing for certain with the Schefflers.
No one was going to put young Scottie Scheffler on a pedestal.
Which was OK with the precocious kid. He didn’t need a pedestal. All he needed was to turn over an empty bucket of balls on those warm summer days when he was at Royal Oaks CC in Dallas.
“He would take the bucket, turn it upside down and sit there,” said Harrison Frazar, who was one of many PGA Tour members who practiced and played at Royal Oaks. “But it was more than watching me. He would study divot patterns, ask me about hitting shots off the toe of a club.
“It was heady stuff for a 10-year-old kid. He was always inquisitive, but always respectful.”
Joel Edwards, another PGA Tour member at Royal Oaks who hit balls while Scheffler watched, has indelible memories of the young golfer. Most prominent is that the 10-year-old kid was always in long pants – in Dallas, in summertime – and Edwards said with a laugh, “he looked like a Tour player at 10.”
But what he also had back then was the competitive game face that is unmistakable in this, his sixth year on the PGA Tour. So dogged was Scheffler’s desire to compete that as an 8-year-old he challenged Frazar to a putting game he called “Aces Only.”
Scheffler gave himself the honors at the first hole, made a 12-footer, Frazar missed and for the next eight holes the young lad had control and determined that they would be 40-foot putts. No one made an ace and Frazar knew he had been hustled and owed the kid a sleeve of balls.
Edwards said he was never hustled, just outplayed by 10-year-old Scottie Scheffler. The challenge was to stand on the range and hit wedge shots at the large metal poles. “He cost me a fortune,” Edwards said.
Pepper has heard so many similar stories from people who knew Scottie Scheffler the boy at Royal Oaks CC and for the past few years she has been an eyewitness to an intensity that is unmatched in the game. “He has a creativity to be admired,” said Pepper, who marveled at the up-and-downs Scheffler made at the par-4 ninth, par-5 11th, and par-4 14th in Sunday’s winning round at the Memorial Tournament.
In each case, Scheffler let nothing distract his attention from the next shot – and to those who suggest that he mimics Tiger Woods in this regard, Pepper offered a succinct critique:
“You could see the Tiger burn,” laughed Pepper. “But not with Scottie. With him, it’s a slow burn, maybe a simmer.”
Ah, but how he gets the job done with uncanny consistency and a mental fortitude that is at its best on the biggest stages.
“I always try to lean as much as I can on my mind,” said Scheffler, moments after winning the PGA Championship. “I think that’s probably my greatest strength.”
As memory serves, Scheffler was standing on the 18th green at the Quail Hollow Club when he said that. He definitely wasn’t standing on a pedestal; but he could have been sitting on an empty bucket turned upside down.
