While Rory McIlroy’s win at the Masters was an emotional outpouring as a result of his 11-year major drought and career Grand Slam, Scheffler’s win on Sunday felt close to the opposite.
McIlroy’s Masters Sunday was a rollercoaster of highs and lows. Scheffler’s US PGA Sunday felt like an inexorable journey towards the inevitable.
That said, he was by his standards all over the place on the front nine. The control and measure we have come to associate with the world number one were rarely seen; but for a hot putter, it would have been even worse.
But no-one in golf – and few across all sports – are as mentally strong or as adept at bouncing back as Scheffler.
His bogey on the ninth meant he and a charging Jon Rahm were tied on nine under. Normal humans would likely have panicked and crumbled.
Scheffler responded by birdieing the 10th.
It was one of the six times at Quail Hollow that he followed a bogey with an immediate bounce-back birdie.
It felt like a key moment, and so it proved. Scheffler was suddenly imperious, picking up further strokes with ridiculous ease at the 14th and 15th.
The chasing Rahm faltered, bringing to mind the travails of Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Vijay Singh as they desperately tried to reel in Tiger Woods in his pomp.
He has a long way to go to match Woods in every sense, but there is no doubt Scheffler is the closest thing in mentality and competitive nature we have seen since the 15-time major champion’s peak years.
That was illustrated equally as well 12 months ago, even though he did not win the US PGA.
Shortly before the second round in Kentucky, Scheffler was arrested on his way into the tournament as he tried to avoid heavy traffic caused by an earlier unrelated accident in which a male pedestrian died.
The picture of him in an orange prison jumpsuit went viral but he still made his tee time and, despite a minimal warm-up and with his mind surely scrambled, shot a scarcely believable five under par on day two.
His weekend challenge faltered but he still remarkably finished eighth. From mugshot and jail cell to a top-10 finish in a major within 54 hours.
A year to the day of his arrest, Scheffler demolished Quail Hollow’s infamous three-hole stretch from the 16th that is dubbed The Green Mile, named in honour of Stephen King’s prison novel that later became a movie.
He was five under from the 14th to the 18th and that detached him from the pack, giving him the cushion that meant his scrappy front nine on Sunday was not terminal.
It may well not have been lost on him that a year on from his own jail saga, it was down The Green Mile that he took charge of the US PGA.
