Scottie Scheffler’s High-Level Performance Still Not Leading to Wins

Perhaps my personal favorite bit of philosophical perspective ever comes not from Socrates or Plato, but the brilliant philosopher Homer Simpson, who once concluded that a provocative tale was bereft of any moral, instead suggesting, “It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.”

In the wake of Scottie Scheffler’s latest close call, I was once again reminded of this overview.

The world’s No. 1-ranked player has now competed in 13 consecutive events without a victory, dating back to his season-opening triumph at The American Express.

Armed with only this information, we can presume that it’s been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad campaign for Scottie, considering he’d won 19 official titles – and a few more unofficial ones – in the past four years, which parcels out to just about a victory in every fourth start, a rate which is very much in line with that of Tiger Woods, whose 82 career wins have come in 378 starts.

It’s a form of golf blasphemy, of course, to compare any player to Woods – and certainly Scheffler himself wasn’t requesting such a connection – but numbers are numbers, and even those who understand there’s no comparison found few others with whom to analogize these totals.

You’d think this current drought would quell this notion, but if anything, it only enhances it. It’s revisionist history to believe Woods won every time he teed it up. In 1998 and 2004, he only claimed a single event each year, yet combined for 17 top-fives and 35 top-10s in those campaigns, which simply suggests an incredibly high level of play and maybe an even higher level of bad luck.

In those 13 starts since his last win, Scheffler has produced four runner-up finishes – including a playoff loss to Viktor Hovland at the Travelers Championship on Monday morning – eight top-fives and nothing outside the top-25.

Those second-place results include a Masters loss to defending champion Rory McIlroy, a playoff loss to Matt Fitzpatrick at the RBC Heritage, a finish well behind a red-hot Cameron Young at the Cadillac Championship and the playoff loss to Hovland, when Scheffler missed a short putt on the first extra hole.

That’s a quartet of defeats to arguably four of the world’s top 10 players.

During this five-month span, he’s made $13,468,574 in on-course earnings, which in itself would rank first on this season’s PGA Tour money list, right ahead of Fitzpatrick, who’s won three times.

For the crowd which somehow still believes that results are the lone barometer of performance, allow me to submit that Scheffler is also leading in SG: Total, SG: Tee to Green, scoring average, birdie average and bogey avoidance.

If we’re trying to uncover why and how he hasn’t won, there are plenty of myths that have already been debunked.

He needs to play better in the opening rounds.

I’ll admit it: This was my take for much of the season, as it appeared Scottie was putting himself too far behind the leaders on Thursday before trying to scratch and claw his way back for the final three days.

It still might be an issue at times – he got off to a slow start at the U.S. Open and tried to play catch-up for the next 54 holes – but his season-long first-round scoring average is 69.64 and ranks 32nd, which isn’t a world-beating number, but hardly seems like the root cause for so many near-misses.

His proximity to the hole isn’t what it used to be.

Indeed, Scheffler ranked either first or second in this category the past two seasons, and he’s now 91st. That sounds like a massive difference, but the actual proximity number doesn’t: Those previous two seasons, he hit approach shots to an average of just over 33 feet from the hole; this season, he’s averaging a little more than 37 feet.

Can four feet make an impact, especially over the course of an entire campaign? Absolutely, but let’s not act like he was hitting every iron shot to five feet for the past few years, and now he can hit a green in regulation. In fact, he leads in that statistic. I have a difficult time believing proximity makes all the difference, especially when the top-10 in this category have combined to win exactly one title this season.

He can’t make any putts.

This one ranks as the biggest fallacy around Scheffler’s game right now. He’s currently ranked 12th on the PGA Tour in putting this season, and even if you want to incorporate a recency bias from the way he rolled it in Connecticut, know this: He was actually six spots lower on this list before last week.

Maybe it’s a little bit of everything. Maybe he needs to start stronger on some Thursdays and hit the ball closer with his irons and make a few more putts. Sure. Tell me a golfer who doesn’t want to improve in each of those areas.

Or maybe, though, Scheffler is playing at an extremely high level this season – even better than players with one or two more wins to their resumes.

And maybe when we try to examine just why he hasn’t won more, why he’s been saddled with so many close calls and near-misses and heart-breakers when he’s so used to winning, we should collectively think of that terrific piece of philosophy.

It’s just a bunch of stuff that happened.