For the last few years it’s taken a pair of binoculars to see anything wrong with Scottie Scheffler’s golf game. Still, he left last week’s U.S. Open bemoaning one troubling trend: all season long he’s been, by his standards, a slow starter, spotting the leader strokes before playing catch-up on the weekends.
“This year I haven’t had many 36-hole leads. I haven’t had any 54-hole leads,” he said.
Well, that didn’t last long.
Just five days later, Scheffler owns the 36-hole lead at the Travelers Championship. After a Thursday round of six-under 64 he set the place on fire Friday morning, making 11 birdies against just a single bogey en route to 10-under 60 and a two-round record at 16 under par.
He leads by two over Viktor Hovland, who could only manage 9-under 61.
Scheffler’s right about his season-long trends: he’s top-three in scoring average for his second, third and final rounds on Tour this year but just 57th in his first rounds. This week he’s improved on both his Thursday and Friday marks.
Scheffler had a few interesting takeaways following the birdie barrage.
Mostly he was dismissive of his own dominance, writing off the difference between a good vs. great round as the matter of a few holed putts.
“Some days they’re kind of hanging on the edge and not quite going in, and then other days they’re finding the bottom of the cup. Today was a day definitely which most of them were finding the bottom of the cup,” he said.
Scheffler would have become the second player in Tour history to break 60 twice, though he admitted doesn’t remember all that much about his 59 at TPC Boston in 2020.
“I wish my golf memory was a little better, to be honest with you. I remember the end of that round, the birdie putt I made on 18, but outside of that, I don’t really remember a whole lot.”
He joked that shooting 59 here wouldn’t have been all that impressive anyway, knowing Jim Furyk has shot 58.
“It was kind of funny. It was like, ‘Yeah, it would be cool to shoot 59, but somebody has already shot 58 here, so it’s not even the course record,'” he said. “You know, Jim kind of takes away a little bit of the special 59 when you are losing still.”
And he shared a favorite saying from the golf world.
“The old adage in golf is you have to be really smart or really dumb. I don’t want to call myself dumb, but like, my long-term memory is not as sharp. Maybe it’s a little bit easier to kind of put some things behind me,” he said. He added that he will occasionally go back and watch old footage of his golf swings when he needs clues — “searching for feels and kind of things that you like” — but mostly he enjoys staying in the present.
Finally he gently dismissed another golf cliche: that it’s hard to back up one great round with another good one.
“I think that’s a little overrated. I think when you are playing good, you’re playing good,” he said. “I just wouldn’t overthink it.”
So far, so good.
