Scottie Scheffler: The making of a Masters champion

AUGUSTA, Ga. – Colt Knost and the other PGA Tour pros that called Royal Oaks Golf Club in Dallas home used to call Scottie Scheffler their little shadow.

“He followed us around with those puppy dog eyes,” Knost said.

Scheffler did so with a purpose. Every chance he could get, he’d flip over a range ball bucket and sit and watch renowned instructor Randy Smith give lessons to the likes of Knost, Hunter Mahan, Harrison Frazar, Justin Leonard, and Martin Flores and he absorbed all this knowledge on how to play the game.

“He’s like a sponge,” Smith said.

Scheffler was the kid who always wanted to have putting contests and no putt was ever good. He’d play with the pros from the back tees and stand on the range for hours, peppering a yellow pole that would be anywhere from 70 to 90 yards depending on where the tee was for the day.

“Like every five minutes, you just heard this ding,” Knost recalled. “Scotty would just turn around and smile. I mean, he just would wear this thing out.”

All these years later, Scheffler, 25, is still peppering flagsticks. On Sunday, he shot 1-under 71 to win the 86^th Masters by three strokes and validate his rise to World No. 1 in impressive fashion. It also continued his torrid run of late, notching his fourth victory in six starts over the last two months. But Scheffler’s ascendancy to major champion is no flash-in-the-pan. It’s been a step-by-step process rising through the ranks to major champion status.

“He’s been a winner his whole life,” Knost said. “He won some 90 junior tournaments, U.S. Junior Am, three college wins, Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year, wins on the PGA Tour. The next step was the majors.”

I can’t believe what I witnessed this week! Seeing Scottie grow up and become the best player on the planet is absolutely incredible! So proud and happy for the kid! @TheMasters champion!!!!

— Colt Knost (@ColtKnost) April 11, 2022

Hitting in a Jersey field

Before Scheffler developed his game at Royal Oaks, he already loved the game. He was born in New Jersey and his fondest memories of living there consist of hitting golf balls in their backyard over their house.

That wasn’t the only place he’d whack them. One of his older sisters, Callie, swam competitively at Bergen Community College, so rather than drive home during her practice, Scottie would hit golf balls on a nearby field.

“We would go out there with a flashlight because it was dark in the winter, and the police would kick us off and we’d come back on and the police would kick us off (again),” Scottie’s father, Scott, recalled. “One day, the officer came over and I said, ‘Would you just watch him for a minute?’ He said, ‘Wow, he really likes this. He’s good at it.’ Then he wouldn’t bother us anymore.”

A love of the game was quickly established and it took flight when the Schefflers relocated to Texas when Scottie was 6 — his mother, Diane, the breadwinner in the family, had landed a COO job at the Dallas law firm Thompson & Knight.

Scheffler’s parents reportedly borrowed $50,000 to join Royal Oaks so Scottie could work with Smith, who had coached Leonard to a British Open title in 1997. From the first swing, Smith realized that Scheffler possessed a rare gift.

“He had a savant-like quality the way he went about things. He did things the other kids didn’t do,” he said. “I’ve seen other kids with pretty swings hit the ball far and all that, but everything Scottie did was tied to hitting to a target. He could shape it both ways at a target. He’s a sponge. He picked up all this information from all the pros at Royal Oaks and absorbed everything.”

Smith did another interesting thing: he never changed Scheffler’s unorthodox footwork.

“He’s an athlete,” Smith said. “And athletes play golf differently than robots.”

Added Knost: “All these young kids go out and play golf swing and he goes out and plays golf. He’s got these weird finishes but all he’s trying to do is put a score on the board.”

Congratulations to Scottie Scheffler !! 🙌 🏆
From 2006 Future Masters 10-Under Age Group winner to 2022 Masters Champion!
We are proud of you!! 👍 ⛳️ 💚 #GrowingGolfSince1950 #thesekidsaregood #juniorgolf #themasters2022 #masterschampion pic.twitter.com/sg5pqllWvY

— Future Masters (@FMJrGolf) April 11, 2022

Dressed for success

Scheffler grew up at a time when Jordan Spieth, three years his senior, was setting a high bar for golfers in the Dallas area, but Scheffler kept pace by winning more than 90 Legends Junior Tour and North Texas PGA tournaments and battled head to head with fellow PGA Tour pro Will Zalatoris, who met Scheffler when he was 9 and described him as “goofy.”

“He wore pants to every tournament even if it was 110 degrees,” Zalatoris recalled.

“I wore pants when I was a kid at Royal Oaks because I wanted to play golf on the PGA Tour. I would wear pants and a collared shirt to like third-grade class and get made fun of and rightfully so,” Scheffler said. “I always wanted to be out here.”

Scheffler also said he owes a debt of gratitude to Tiger Woods, who provided inspiration too. Scheffler uses the model of Tiger’s signature irons, wore his shoes and shirt at the Masters, and learned from his YouTube clips.

“I remember watching the highlights of him winning in ’97, kind of running away with it, and he never really broke his concentration,” he said. “That’s something that I reminded myself of today. I tried not to look up. I tried to keep my head down and just keep doing what I was doing because I didn’t want to break my concentration.”

During his college days at Texas, Scheffler’s coach, John Fields, noticed that Scheffler had a tendency to lose his concentration in the middle of rounds and make unforced errors.

“He would kind of come up to me and be like, ‘Scottie, if that was the 18th hole and you were trying to win the golf tournament, you would never hit a shot like that.’ He was 100 percent correct. And so that’s something I’ve worked on, just being focused and committed to each shot,” Scheffler said. “I struggled with that in college. I wasn’t prepared. I wasn’t always ready. I didn’t trust myself like I do now. And so when I get over a shot now, I’m fully confident that I’m going to make a good swing. And that’s really all I can do.”

Getting into a green jacket

On Sunday, at Augusta, Scheffler’s focus remained intact until the final hole when he took four putts on the final green but had a big enough cushion that it didn’t matter that he’d broken his concentration.

“The minute I did was on 18 green when I finally got on there and I had a five-shot lead and was like, ‘All right, now I can enjoy this.’  And you saw the results of that. Thank you, Tiger,” he said.

The final pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place late last year when Scheffler was chosen by U.S. Ryder Cup captain Steve Stricker as a captain’s pick. Assistant captain Davis Love III recalled being amazed how confident all his teammates had been that he deserved to be on the team.

“It wasn’t just one or two guys that you trust, it was everybody saying, Scheffler’s the guy,” Love said.

Justin Thomas observed how claiming a big-time scalp in Sunday singles over then-World No. 1 Jon Rahm gave Scheffler a boost of confidence that has carried into this season. “That week playing under the biggest pressure – I mean, the highest pressure I’ve played under, and then us winning as a team, him playing as well as he did, making those big putts when he needed to was a huge, huge – I can’t speak for him, but I would assume was a huge –  just a big wave of confidence for him that he was able to build on.”

Four wins in his last six events, World No. 1, and now a major. It’s heady stuff but Knost predicted the floodgates would open for Scheffler once he claimed his first title. Why was he so sure?

“He’s just a world beater, man,” Knost said. “It’s been a treat to watch him grow up. I mean, he’s, he’s so huge now. I remember when he was like knee-high following everybody around with those puppy dog eyes.”

And now he’s the owner of his very own Green Jacket too.