ith one notable exception, the cream has always risen to the top in big events at Valhalla. Since journeyman Mark Brooks won the first PGA Championship to be staged at the Louisville venue in 1996, the Wanamaker Trophy has ended up in the hands of Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy there in 2000 and 2014 respectively. Oh, and editions of the Senior PGA Championship in 2004 and 2011 produced victories for Hale Irwin and Tom Watson.
All of which points to Scottie Scheffler being the man to beat in next week’s 106th PGA Championship in Kentucky given that he’s currently dominating the game in exactly the same way as Woods and McIlroy were at the time of their triumphs in the PGA of America’s regular major and Irwin and Watson, too, in the same organisation’s over-50s’ equivalent.
Let’s not beat about the bush here. Based on recent form, Scheffler is almost at that point where he’s become unstoppable. He’s won four times in his last five starts, including a second Masters success in three years. That run also included the 50th edition of The Players Championship and two of the PGA Tour’s signature events – the Arnold Palmer Invitational and RBC Heritage. In short, he’s the game’s best player right now by a country mile. In four appearances so far in this particular event, the 27-year-old has recorded three top-ten finishes, including a tie for second last year behind Brooks Koepka at Oak Hill. He missed the cut in 2022, but blips like that just don’t seem to happen with Scheffler these days.
When his name was sitting at the top of the leaderboard heading into the back nine on the final day of last month’s Masters, the other Green Jacket contenders started to make mistakes. Collin Morikawa, the 2020 PGA champion, admitted he got “greedy” around the turn and duly paid the price, as did major debutant Ludvig Aberg after taking on the pin at the notoriously-tough 11th hole at Augusta National and ending up wet.
Still at high school when McIlroy landed his win a decade ago, this will be a new test for Scheffler in terms of tackling a golf course in a major, though maybe not if baby Scheffler hasn’t arrived over the weekend, with his wife, Meredith, now being overdue and, understandably, that’s all he’s been focused on over the past three weeks back home in Texas. “Scheffler is by far the favourite and, if he we can’t wait until the US Open as we starting talking slam,” observed two-time US Open champion Curtis Strange, speaking on an ESPN media call ahead of the season’s second major. “But we don’t know what the baby situation is going to be next week.”
