Scottie Scheffler didn’t mince words.
This weekend, the world’s No. 1 golfer said, quickly became one of the lows of his career.
He became the first American ever to lose the first four matches of a Ryder Cup, flopping on a home course filled with fans begging for their country’s star to golf like one.
The hurt stemming from that was difficult for Scheffler to describe, as it made him winless in his past eight Ryder Cup matches despite a PGA Tour cycle where he won six tournaments and produced 17 top 10 finishes.
But Scheffler still managed to knock off Rory McIlroy in a 1-up victory that marked the first showdown between the Nos. 1 and 2 golfers in Ryder Cup history.
He trailed by a hole with seven to play, but Scheffler took two out of the next three to flip the advantage and turn the marquee singles match into one that kept fueling the Team USA comeback — which ultimately fell short in a 15-13 loss.
“I can’t tell you how much I needed these guys this week,” Scheffler said, with the other 11 American golfers and captain Keegan Bradley surrounding him in a news conference, “and it’s just a really special group. It was probably one of the lowest moments of my career, but it turned out to be one of the most special just because I’ve got great friends in this room and I was really proud to be battling with these guys for three days.”
Scheffler said he didn’t think much about the notion that he defeated the No. 2 golfer in the world.
He credited the golfers in front of him — Cameron Young, Justin Thomas and Bryson DeChambeau — for sinking putts and generating momentum, but Scheffler still couldn’t capitalize at times, missing a 7-foot birdie putt that would’ve given him the lead on the ninth hole.
On the 14th though, he took the lead for good.
He emerged from a grueling match that featured plenty of heckling directed at McIlroy again, despite the extra security and New York State police that remained in place from Saturday.
He looked like the No. 1 golfer down the stretch. He looked like the version of Scheffler that everyone expected the first two days of the tournament.
And until at least Ireland begins in 2027, he quieted some of his Ryder Cup criticism.
“When I go back and look at the first couple days of this tournament, at times it felt like a perfect storm of things were happening against us, and today we had some stuff that seemed to go right,” Scheffler said. “And really, at the end of the match, I was just proud to be able to get a point up on the board.”