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AUGUSTA, Ga. – Scottie Scheffler woke up Sunday with a three-shot lead in the Masters and a pit in his stomach that simply wouldn’t go away.
“I was so stressed out,” the 25-year-old Texan said.
On the course, Scheffler is on an all-timer of a hot streak. He had won three of his last five tournaments (after having never taken a PGA Tour event) and ascended in dramatic fashion to the top of the world rankings. He came here and tore up an Augusta National course while essentially everyone else struggled.
He was unflappable. Patient. Poised. He looked unbeatable.
Yet he was a wreck. Maybe it was the stress. Maybe it was the stakes. Maybe he felt like an imposter. Maybe it was all too much too quickly. All he knew is that a few hours before he was set to tee off in the final pairing, he was sitting in an area rented home, bawling his eyes out in front of his wife, Meredith.
“I don’t think I am ready for this,” Scheffler told her. “I don’t feel like I am ready for this kind of stuff.”
Meredith tried to comfort her husband.
“Who are you to say you are not ready?”
The Schefflers are people of faith and they leaned on that faith in an attempt to find the peace and calm needed to get through a long morning. Scottie suspected that if he could just get to the course, get out on the Augusta National practice range and later the first tee, that the pressure would subside.
“Off the golf course is stressful,” he said. “On the golf course it was a lot of fun.”
And so Meredith was the rock that got him to the golf course, and then the fun really began.
Scheffler cruised to shoot a 71 Sunday, good enough for 10-under for the tournament and his first major championship. He led throughout, was rarely challenged, and had such a huge lead on 18 that he allowed himself to break concentration on the green and promptly four-putted.
Not that it mattered. He was that good.
The stress Scheffler was fighting was self-induced. Yes, this was the Masters, arguably the most coveted championship in the sport. And, yes, it has caused even all-time greats to turn into hacks.
He had no doubt about his ability to play the game, though. He could hit every shot. He was confident in managing the course. His concentration was excellent. No one in the world is playing better.
“I never felt like I was going to make a bogey,” he said, which, considering his sizable lead, was significant because the rest of the field would need him to collapse to catch him.
Yet Scheffler noted that it is human nature to make things seem bigger than they are. It used to doom him in junior golf, he said, and now at the Masters it was doing it again.
“My stomach has been hurting for two days,” he said. “Gosh, it was a long morning.”
His wife attempted to lower the stakes. It’s just golf. It’s just work.
“Meredith said to me, ‘If you win this golf tournament today, if you lose this golf tournament, if you don’t win another golf tournament for 10 years, I am still going to love you.’”
That was the perspective that Scheffler said he needed.
“If today is my time, then today is my time,” he decided.
It was his time. Scheffler was the only competitor here to go under par in each of the four rounds. He was brilliant. Where essentially every other elite player in the world struggled — only eight other players broke par for the tourney — he just cruised along. He essentially won this tournament on Friday afternoon and then just never let the pressure cause him to collapse.
“I just started cruising,” he said.
Scheffler has spent his life dreaming of this moment. He started hitting golf balls at age 5. He became competitive in elementary school. As a kid, he would play in long slacks, rather than shorts, because that’s what pro golfers wore. He even dressed like a golfer at school.
“Wore pants and a collared shirt to third grade class and got made fun of,” he said, laughing. “And rightfully so.”
Yet here on the verge of finally achieving it, the crushing pressure left him feeling debilitated. He knew what to avoid once he started playing — don’t lose concentration, stay aggressive, avoid the water on 12.
But could he get there? On the morning of the Masters he was crying?
“Playing with the lead is not easy,” he said.
He made it look that way, once his wife and his faith got him to Augusta National to complete a dream.
Today, yeah, today was Scottie Scheffler’s time.