Scheffler Is Aiming For History In The Players Championship. Nobody Has Ever Repeated As Champion.

Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida — Tiger Woods has never done it, and neither did Jack Nicklaus, even before The Players Championship relocated to a former marsh known as the TPC Sawgrass.

This is the 50th edition of the PGA Tour’s top event and the first time anyone has defended their title. Scottie Scheffler is up next, and his chances are as favourable as they have been to any previous winner.

That includes Woods, who only had one shot at it in 2002, failed to break 70, and tied for 14th.

“I just think it’s a golf course where you don’t see a lot of repeat winners in general,” Scheffler said in an interview. “There’s not a guy that you have seen win on this golf course a bunch.”

Scheffler Is Aiming For History In The Players Championship. Nobody Has Ever Repeated As Champion.

Only five golfers have won twice on the Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass. Nicklaus won The Players three times, but that was before it was permanently relocated to this Pete Dye arena of never-ending excitement and that one (mainly) island green on the par-3 17th.

Scheffler is now the world’s number one player, the first time a reigning The Players winner has held that position since Jason Day in 2016. The difference is that Scheffler came to Sawgrass off a dominating showing at Bay Hill, winning by five strokes.

Already the best from tee to green, his putter finally came to life, and the rest of golf’s elite were understandably worried.

“I’ve personally had some nice ball-striking weeks,” FedEx Cup champion Viktor Hovland stated. “But for him to have done that for so long and won so many tournaments in the previous few years is extremely extraordinary. It may feel more difficult the next month because you go through moments you can’t miss and are hitting it on a string. “He just appears to keep doing what he is doing.”

Scheffler has been number one for the past ten months, and the math is straightforward. Along with three victories in the last year, including the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, he has finished outside the top ten in only three of 22 tournaments.

It remains to be seen how that transfers to Sawgrass, especially on a course where he appeared to be playing alone a year ago. He led by six shots at one point before winning by five, just as he did at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.

Unfortunately, history is not on his side. The Stadium Course is known for never preferring a specific type of golf, and problems tend to occur almost everywhere, as everyone tends to find at some point during the game.

“That’s why I think it’s one of the best places we play on tour, just because it doesn’t suit one type of player,” Scheffler said in an interview. “Bomb-and-gouge doesn’t work well here. But even shorter hitters who plot it around can struggle here because you have to hit it exactly where you’re looking, or you’ll be punished harshly.

Scheffler Is Aiming For History In The Players Championship. Nobody Has Ever Repeated As Champion.

What has changed is that The Players now require an asterisk, but only if it claims to have the strongest and most diverse field in golf. Aside from world rankings, golf has become so divided due to the defections to LIV Golf that none of the top are playing at Sawgrass, including Masters champion Jon Rahm and Cameron Smith, who won Sawgrass two years ago. Not Dustin Johnson, Brooks Koepka, or Bryson DeChambeau.

And, according to PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan, there is no imminent fix.

“It’s going to take time,” Monahan said of any arrangement with Saudi Arabia and a solution to golf’s divided environment.

The Players begins on Thursday, and if nothing else, it’s a chance to shift the focus back inside the ropes, at least for four days.

Xander Schauffele is not a fan of Monahan, saying the commissioner has “a long way to go” in regaining trust. Rory McIlroy stepped out in support of Monahan on Wednesday morning, saying he was the ideal man for the job and that the tour was stronger thanks to fresh funding from a group of private investors.

Scheffler Is Aiming For History In The Players Championship. Nobody Has Ever Repeated As Champion.

And then there was Scheffler, who suggested that any blame for the divide should fall on the players not in Sawgrass this week because of LIV.

“If the fans are upset, then look at the guys who left,” he went on to say. We took a tour, we were all together, and the departed folks were no longer present. At the end of the day, that is where the splintering stems from.”

Schauffele summarized it best.

“I think you would like to have those players playing in an ideal world, but I feel like we’re sort of beating a dead horse in this media room a little bit,” he said.

SOURCE – (AP)