Should the Americans be concerned about Scottie Scheffler in team play the way they once were with Tiger Woods?
In Woods’ prime, his performances on Ryder Cups never came close to matching the dominance he displayed when he was playing for himself in PGA Tour and major championship golf.
Woods played 37 Ryder Cup matches in his career and had an eye-opening pedestrian record of just 13-21-3.
Scheffler, who’s been ranked No. 1 for 156 weeks and has won 13 times in the past two years, is the most dominant player since Woods.
And yet there was Scheffler in Friday morning’s foursomes getting dusted alongside partner Russell Henley by Europe’s Ludvig Aberg and Matt Fitzpatrick, who entered these matches with a ghastly 1-7 overall record in the Ryder Cup.
Scheffler, remember, lost by an astonishing 9&7 score while playing alongside Brooks Koepka against Aberg and Viktor Hovland in a 2023 foursomes match two years ago in Rome.
Scheffler’s only foursomes win came at the Presidents Cup alongside Henley. But he went 0–2 with Sam Burns at the 2022 Presidents Cup and 0–2 at the 2023 Ryder Cup — once with Burns and that unfortunate match with Koepka that left him in tears afterward.
“It hurt a little bit because I didn’t feel like I was as prepared as I could have been,” Scheffler said two weeks ago at the Procore Championship of that blowout loss. “So going into this Cup, I’ve put a lot of work into my game over the last couple years to get ready and to go play this event.”
In fairness, Scheffler’s partner, Henley, who’s ranked No. 3 in the world, should have had his Huggies on considering how petrified he looked on the big stage in his first Ryder Cup. But Scheffler was not in good form, either.
“I felt like Russ and I did some good things,’ Scheffler said after the loss on Friday. “We just didn’t hole enough putts early.”
They didn’t hole enough putts all match.
“We had some chances,’’ Scheffler said. “But overall, the guys we played, they played a really good round.’’
Aberg and Fitzpatrick were 5-under par in the 15-hole match. Scheffler and Henley were even par.
The loss left Scheffler with a 1-6 career record in foursomes, including Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups.
This is a trend. An alarming one.