Should Augusta National host a Women’s Masters?

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – Scottie Scheffler was a fine young player with a bright future but no victories on the PGA TOUR. That seems like ages ago. It was only last month. Today, Scheffler could become world No. 1 with a third victory in four starts at THE PLAYERS Championship. He would need Jon Rahm to finish worse than 10th and Collin Morikawa worse than a three-way T2, but the fact remains, Scheffler has opened the proverbial floodgates. “I don’t really think about getting over the hump or monkey off the back or anything like that,” he said from TPC Sawgrass, where he missed the cut last year in his PLAYERS debut. “I will say second time around it definitely felt a little bit different being in contention.” To recap: Scheffler, who seemed destined to win when he dusted Rahm at the Ryder Cup in September, beat Patrick Cantlay in a playoff at the Waste Management Phoenix Open last month. It was lifechanging. There were tears. Then he tamed brutal conditions to win the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard last weekend. It was his second win in 21 days. His heater has been impressive, but not unpredictable. In fact, there’s a long history of players who have validated that first win with a second in short order. David Duval, the 13-time TOUR winner who now plays on PGA TOUR Champions, even strung together three Ws in three starts when he broke into the winner’s circle in October and November of 1997 after a series of frustrating close calls. No one has replicated that since, but a handful of players have been where Scheffler is now. “The first time I won, I went on a bit of a heater, too,” said Webb Simpson, who broke through at the 2011 Wyndham Championship, was T10 at The Barclays, and won the Deutsche Bank Championship at TPC Boston. “It was actually a bit similar to what’s going on with Scottie.” Two wins in three starts? Try identical. History, though, shows they’ve got company. Justin Rose won the 2010 Memorial, finished T9 at the Travelers Championship, and won the AT&T National. Again, two victories in three starts. (He led the Travelers by three but shot a final-round 75, leaving him one round from three straight wins, otherwise known as the full Duval.) “I’m kind of glad he’s got the monkey off his back,” Rose said. “He’s still a young guy, it’s not like it was a big monkey or anything, but he’d been in the hunt quite a few times. I felt the relief at the Memorial. I was 30 years old, I’d played on the European Tour and I’d won a lot, I’d probably won 10 times in my career, but still, the U.S. media, I feel, are very stats driven. “It’s about your batting average, or your 3-point shooting percentage, whatever it is,” Rose continued. “And obviously we’ve all been used to the stats Tiger put up, so when you’re not winning, it gets frustrating. I was aware of my inability to finish some situations and what that might look like on paper, so to start to reverse that was a relief but also confidence-building.” Rose had three runners-up and four third-place finishes on TOUR before finally getting his first win. Scheffler, the 2019 Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year and 2020 PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year, played well enough to qualify for East Lake in each of his first two seasons despite his lack of a victory. He had 17 top-10s before breaking through, including two seconds and three thirds. Duval had seven runner-up finishes in three seasons before busting the doors down. Winning tends to alter people’s perceptions of the close calls. Winning twice or more in short order, early in your career, changes the narrative completely. Xander Schauffele got his first two TOUR wins, including the TOUR Championship, in eight starts in 2017. Later that year Patton Kizzire got his first win at the OHL Classic at Mayakoba, then won again at the 2018 Sony Open in Hawaii – two victories in a span of four starts. Adam Scott got his first three TOUR wins, including the 2004 PLAYERS Championship, in a stretch of 13 starts. Jimmy Walker collected his first three trophies in eight starts in 2013—14. The outlier, of course, was Tiger Woods, for whom the floodgates opened immediately. He won twice in his first eight professional starts in 1996, made it three-for-nine at the Tournament of Champions to begin ’97, and nabbed his first major title at the Masters that April. The open-floodgates phenomenon is not unique to the TOUR, and in fact intensifies the further you climb down golf’s hierarchy. Sungjae Im began his Korn Ferry Tour career with a quick win and runner-up in 2018 to lead the money list wire-to-wire. Mito Pereira won in back-to-back weeks last year and was the 12th in KFT history to get the three-win call-up to the PGA TOUR. The floodgates are even busier in college. Maverick McNealy, one of Scheffler’s teammates on the juggernaut 2017 U.S. Walker Cup team (Collin Morikawa, Will Zalatoris, et al), was a sophomore at Stanford when he shot 65 to win the Southwestern Intercollegiate for his first college victory. He won the Olympia Fields/Fighting Illini Invitational the next week. It was the start of a heater in which McNealy won six times in 13 starts for the Cardinal. “I remember writing in my journal, ‘It’s way more fun playing to win than playing to not screw up,’” McNealy, who’s 21st in the FedExCup, said from TPC Sawgrass. “It definitely comes in waves. I’ve had stretches where I haven’t missed the center of the driver face for a month and a half. I’ve had stretches where I couldn’t miss a putt for like a month. “Unfortunately,” continued McNealy, who has two career runner-up finishes on TOUR, “they haven’t lined up together at this point; hopefully they will. There’s so much random variance in this game, you just kind of have to ride it out. When you’re on a heater you gotta ride it out as long as you can, and when you’re off a heater you’ve got to shallow it out and get back on one.” McNealy didn’t win in his first year at Stanford; he equates his pro career thus far as four years of being a freshman. But as Scheffler reminds, that can change. Confidence builds. The hot hand is real. Winless today, McNealy could be a multiple winner and FedExCup No. 1 next month. Life comes at you pretty fast – especially when the floodgates open.

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KAPALUA, Hawaii – It wasn’t really a secret but former FedExCup champion Jordan Spieth confirmed on Tuesday that he did indeed propose to long-time partner Annie Verret over the holidays. Spieth failed to give too many details of the proposal but confirmed the high school sweethearts are indeed now destined to walk down the aisle at some point in the future. “It was nice,â€� the Texan said of the occasion that came shortly before Christmas. “My brother was in town and her sister got in town, so we had our families there afterwards and it was a great night, really excited.â€� Having faced major championship nerves in the past Spieth said he was well prepared for the big occasion. Trying to close out last year’s Open Championship was more nerve-wracking but he expects those butterflies surrounding the pending nuptials will stay fresh for all time. “I was pretty confident,â€� he smiled. “I’ll probably at some point end up forgetting the British but I won’t probably forget the engagement.â€� Exactly how he popped the question is still not for public consumption although the 11-time PGA TOUR winner almost had to deviate from his plans. “I had a decent idea and then I was pretty sick. And so I had to have a backup plan. But I woke up and felt good that day and went through with it,â€� he added. The 24-year-old has kept his relationship with Verret fairly private over the years short of a few social media posts here and there. In contrast, he’s of course been part of the “Spring Breakâ€� crew with friends Justin Thomas, Rickie Fowler and Smylie Kaufman giving the fans a unique insight into the boy’s trips and vacations he takes. Will those take a back seat now he’s settling down? “No, I think it’s important to have a really nice balance of, obviously, the grind, but then the stress-free kind of take your mind off it and also enjoy the fruits of your labor,â€� Spieth said from Maui. “If we don’t have celebrations of different things that we’re able to accomplish in life, whether it’s a wedding or it’s a great year, or whatever it is, then you’re going to look back in 20 years and say, I just worked my whole life. “If we have the luxury of being able to go out and do that, then I think we’ll enjoy doing so.â€�

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Editor’s note: Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, Spain’s Jon Rahm has erred on the side of caution and time is proving him right. The 25-year-old star, now confined in his home in Arizona, is concerned about his family and friends in Spain and also the health situation in the United States and around the world. The three-time PGA TOUR winner, currently ranked No. 2 in the world and the “winnerâ€� of last week’s Mythical Match Play Championship conducted by PGATOUR.COM, shares his thoughts on the current situation and also reflects on life lessons he has learned from golf. Related: PGA TOUR Latinoamérica’s Lange talks coronavirus | How golf has handled global crises | Golf in these times This is not the time to be selfish. It’s very easy to think that you’re young and nothing is going to happen to you if you catch the virus. We have to think about society, everyone we have next to us. You may not have symptoms and yet still transmit the virus. And you don’t know how far it can go and who can get affected. From the bottom of my heart, millennials, please think twice about what you’re doing. I know younger people have less of a risk of being infected, but the people who are being affected the most are our elders. Please stay at home, observe social distancing and wash your hands regularly. It’s a very small price to pay. At this time, my thoughts are with my family in Spain, including my 85-year-old grandma. I’ve kept in touch with them regularly and despite the self-quarantine, they are all in great spirit. I also want to thank everybody in the health care system: nurses, doctors, anybody related and trying to help the people in need. It’s unbelievable what you guys are doing. And we cannot thank you enough. As someone who arrived in the world of professional golf at a young age, I had to learn very quickly from my mistakes. There have been moments that were not my best, low moments when I had to take several steps back and regroup. I’ve been learning from these experiences and I’ve been climbing to where I am now. There are ups and downs all the time. I started playing this game from a very young age with the aim of being No. 1 in the world and being among the best. There are times when you have no doubt and there are times when you think you are not going to get anywhere near it. It is what it is. You have to keep fighting and maintain your confidence. Gradually, you get used to the magnitude that everything we do can have a great positive or negative effect. It is for you to adapt and learn that you have a great platform to help people. And also know that there are many children who consider you their favorite player and that you can and should pass on good values to them. For starters, win or lose, we need to always do it with humility. You’re never going to see me end up angry after losing a tournament. The winner has played better than you and deserves it, so that’s the first thing. In golf, there is also a lot of integrity involved and ultimately, every time you do something wrong in golf, you apply penalties to yourself. You also learn that, as with anything in life, there is a long process in which you have to work hard. You have to follow that process to improve as a person and at whatever you want to do. It’s not a consistent ascent. There are good times, there are bad times, very bad times and very good times. With experience and work, the good ones become even better, and the bad ones less bad. Around a year ago, I had one of those less bad moments when I finished tied ninth in my third Masters Tournament. On two previous Sundays at Augusta National, I’ve been kind of close to the lead, but not that close. Hopefully, the next time I will play well for three days, so on Sunday, I will have more opportunities to win the tournament and serve a good T-bone steak at the champions dinner, as did Seve Ballesteros and Jose Maria Olazabal. There was also one of those even better moments around this time last year when I won the Zurich Classic of New Orleans along with my partner, Ryan Palmer. Ryan and I get along very well and there’s great chemistry. Our game is similar, we like to hit mostly fades and it was a week in which we both played very well. Now, a year later and under the current circumstances, which has seen tournaments including the Zurich Classic of New Orleans being canceled or postponed, the most important thing for us is to assume our individual responsibility and do everything possible to not spread the virus. And if we have to stay home, we stay home. My wife Kelley and I have been keeping busy at home over the past few weeks to stay fit and mentally fresh, exercising and doing puzzles. We look forward to seeing all of you again very soon when the PGA TOUR resumes play. In the meantime, take care, stay safe and stay home.

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