Telfer's Thoughts

Three years and three months ago Scottie Scheffler was just another little-known American golfer trying his hardest to rack up a win on the USPGA Tour.

Well early in 2023 he made that all important breakthrough with his first win. Now three years and three months later he’s added another 15 wins to that opening win in February 2023.

Oddly enough it took Tiger Woods exactly the same length of time, three years and three months, to record his first 16 wins.

Comparisons with Tiger Woods are an odious exercise. Nonetheless over the past 50 years really only Tiger Woods has notched up as many wins as quickly as Scottie Scheffler. The key to his success? Well, fellow Texan Jordan Spieth might have summed it up best when he said during Scheffler’s latest success, “his club control is elite, maybe the best that’s ever been”. In the end Scheffler won the Memorial Tournament by 4 shots to record his 3 rd win of the year.

It was also a very satisfactory week for Ryan Fox. Playing in his first Signature Event, he finished in a tie for 20 th place. Only the top 70 players on tour were eligible for this event or, put another way, Foxy was teeing it up with most of the world’s top 50 players and to stay in the picture for the full 4 rounds and finish in a tie for 20 th place is no mean feat. He beat a lot of players higher than him on the world rankings. It also lifted him from 66 th to 60 th place on the FedEx Cup standings. It should also be noted that for finishing 20 th in this US$20 million tournament he earned US$250,000. If he keeps this form up there will likely be quite a few more big pay days ahead, for the rest of this year at least.

Not such good news from two of our usual top performers, Lydia Ko and Daniel Hillier.

Lydia, after the superb form she’s shown the golfing world over the last 7-8 months, wasn’t able to produce it in the year’s second Women’s Major – the US Open, the richest tournament in women’s golf. A share of 26 th place was the best Lydia could muster.

Four rounds in the 70’s, only 1 of them under par (the second round 71) meant she never featured on the leader board. Two of her traditional strengths - accuracy off the tee and her deadly putting - were strangely missing at the Erin Hills golf course in Harford, Wisconsin. Breaking her game down by the numbers makes for difficult reading. Her problems began on the tee where she was only able to find 36 fairways out of 56. Such poor numbers usually mean difficulty hitting greens in regulation.

Lydia only managed to find 42 greens in regulation which meant she missed a whopping 30 greens over the 4 rounds. Struggling to find greens impacted on her putting as well. It’s hard to get the ball close to the pin if you’re playing out of the rough on 30 holes. Lydia was averaging 29 putts per round, another figure higher than what we have come to expect from Lydia, considered the best putter in the women’s game.

The title went to 25-year-old Maja Stark from Sweden, a relative outsider ranked outside the world’s top 30 but now a household name in world golf and a prizewinner’s cheque of US$2.4 million to go with the title.

Back in Europe, Kiwi Daniel Hillier was very much in with a chance to grab his second win on the DP World Tour. The Kiwi opened with rounds of 66 and 67 to be just a couple shots off the lead at the halfway stage. Alas he wasn’t able to sustain that early round form and shot rounds of 70 and 73 over the weekend, eventually slipping to a tie for 37 th place at the Austrian Open in Salzburg, finishing 15 shots behind the winner, Germany’s Nicolai von Dellingshausen.