There was a tinge of irony inside the Bethpage interview room Tuesday when Scottie Scheffler — No. 1 in the world since May 2023, the PGA Tour de force of the past two cycles — fielded a question about Tiger Woods, the difficult task previous Team USA captains faced with pairing him and whether Scheffler worried about a similar reality.

Scheffler didn’t want to place himself into that same category.

He thought he’d already had success with different partners over his first two Ryder Cups, though Rome in 2023 spiraled into a disappointment directly followed by his unstoppable rise. Maybe, in Scheffler’s eyes, the aura of Woods complicated things.

“There was some times there when he was doing nothing but winning golf tournaments and just beating the absolute crap out of people time and time again,” he said.