ATLANTA — Scottie Scheffler shies away from comparisons to Tiger Woods even as the numbers are starting to make such links inevitable.
After all, Scheffler has been No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking longer than anyone since Woods. He is the first player on the PGA Tour since Woods to have five-plus wins in back-to-back years. And he comes into this week’s Tour Championship, which will decide the FedEx Cup winner for the 2025 season, with a top-10 finish in each of his past 13 tournaments played.
“It’s very silly to be compared to Tiger Woods,” Scheffler said. “I think Tiger is a guy that stands alone in the game of golf, and I think he always will. Tiger inspired a whole generation of golfers. You’ve grown up watching that guy do what he did week in, week out; it was pretty amazing to see.”
The tall Texan who’s still 10 months away from turning 30 years old has a point about Woods, the California native who turns 50 in late December, when it comes to the big picture. When he won the Masters for the fifth time in April 2019, Woods pushed his count of major championships to 15, which trails only the 18 won by Jack Nicklaus. The most recent victory for Woods on the PGA Tour was at the Zozo Championship in Japan in October 2019, when he matched Sam Snead’s career record of 82.
Scheffler’s first of what are now 18 PGA Tour wins didn’t happen until the Phoenix Open in February 2022, and the oft-injured Woods’ playing schedule has been increasingly limited, so there is little overlap between their careers at this point.