PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — There is a universal truth in this game: Golf can never be fully mastered. Rarified excellence can be achieved, but to see all the pillars of the game firing at once, coupled with the glue that is the golfer’s mind, is the exception, not the norm. A player can feel complete, but that state is fleeting, even for the best.
On Sunday at Royal Portrush, Scottie Scheffler won the Open Championship by four shots to capture his fourth major overall and second of 2025. What the Texan did in County Antrim, and what he has done consistently over his four-year run of dominance, represents the type of golf that can begin to cause slivers of doubt about that universal belief. Only Tiger Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player have won the Open, Masters and PGA Championship before age 30. On Sunday, Scheffler joined them.
“I never thought I’d see a player as close to Tiger as this man currently is,” Jim “Bones” Mackay, who caddied for Phil Mickelson for 25 years, said on NBC’s broadcast of the Open on Saturday.
There were 1,197 days between Woods’ first and fourth major wins. There were 1,197 for Scheffler as well.
As Scheffler stormed to his four-shot 54-hole lead by making almost every putt within 10 feet and salvaging pars from places others would consider jail, he made the championship feel like it was already over. It was. Few players have had that effect on a leaderboard in the history of this sport. Scheffler, now three-quarters of the way to his career Grand Slam, is one of them.
“I grew up waking up early to watch this tournament on TV, just hoping and dreaming I’d get a chance to come play in this championship,” Scheffler told Sky Sports afterward. “It’s pretty cool to be sitting here with the trophy. It’s hard to put it into words.”
Scheffler began the championship by hitting just three fairways and still posting a 3-under 68. He followed it up with a links golf masterclass: a 7-under 64 on Friday in intermittent rain, complete with eight birdies, to take a one-shot lead over Matt Fitzpatrick. However, it was during Saturday’s round, an unusually calm day at the seaside Royal Portrush, that Scheffler’s otherworldly play made the outcome of the championship all too predictable. Scheffler shot a third-round 67 to lead the tournament by four shots over China’s Haotong Li. It gave Scheffler an 81.1 percent win probability, according to DataGolf.Com. A jarring statistic began to circulate: Scheffler had converted his last nine consecutive 54-hole leads to victory.