The well of things to say about Scottie Scheffler and his inevitability of simply winning golf tournaments has run dry. What we’re seeing out of the No. 1 player in the world would be unprecedented if Tiger Woods did not exist, and the fashion in which he chased down Robert MacIntyre to win the BMW Championship on Sunday was both ridiculous and relentless.
Caves Valley wasn’t just the site of another Scheffler victory; it was also witness to Ben Griffin accidentally taking too much creatine and losing the ability to make a proper putting stroke early on in his final round. We were also gifted a sweet new slow-play graphic on the NBC broadcast, which deserves a special shutout that we’ll get into.
LIV Golf also crowned its individual champion in Indianapolis over the weekend, and it turned out to be a player who won the same number of events that I did this year: zero.
Got thoughts on this week’s Par Talk? Shoot me an email at mark.harris@outkick.com or hit me up on X @itismarkharris—I’d love to hear from you.
Scottie Scheffler Did That Thing Again
Scheffler began the final round of the BMW Championship four shots back of Robert MacIntyre. He made birdie on the opening hole, MacIntyre made bogey, and while Scheffler still trailed by two shots with 17 holes to play, it immediately felt like the tournament was his to lose, which quickly became reality.
Scheffler needed all of five holes to catch MacIntyre atop the leaderboard before taking the lead on the seventh hole and never looking back. He ultimately won the event by two shots, and what’s scary about it is that his advantage could have been even greater.
MacIntyre didn’t give away the golf tournament by any means, but it’s hard to argue that his play on Sunday didn’t at least assist Scheffler in finding the winner’s circle. Scheffler was by no means in cruise control, however, as his final round 67 was the third-best round of the day. The fact that his 3-under round included a missed putt from inside five feet on the 12th hole, as well as a miss from inside three feet on the 14th, perfectly encapsulates the level Scheffler is playing at.
Scheffler has long been the best player in the world, but his ability to increase that margin between the next guy on that list, no matter who you want to put in the No. 2 slot, is what has been downright stunning over the last two years or so. The guy has won 14 times in his last 33 starts, which that span includes two Players Championships and three majors.
The lone knock some hold against Scheffler is that he doesn’t produce those memorable shots we’ve seen other legends of the game produce. In other words, some folks believe Scheffler being the best iron player in the world and having the ability to hit every approach shot exactly pin high results in a boring product with no real highlights.
Well, that idea took a haymaker on Sunday afternoon when he holed a pitch shot on the Par 3 17th hole to slam the door shut on MacIntyre.
That’s the shot of the year from the player of the year, and just the latest episode of The Scottie Scheffler Show. Also, I posted on X that Scheffler is the best chipper of the golf ball ever, and I legitimately think when it’s all said and done, he’ll hold that title over the likes of Phil Mickelson, Seve Ballesteros, and anyone else you want to throw at me.
Jon Rahm, The Winless LIV Champion
There is no denying that Rahm had a special season, finishing inside the Top 10 in 12 of his 13 starts on LIV Golf, including four runner-up finishes, but it’s impossible to ignore the Joaquin Niemann-sized elephant in the room when it comes to the individual champion discussion.
LIV has its formula in place when it comes to its season-long race, and no format is going to be perfect, but it’s hard to find a way to make Rahm’s crowning make any sense when he didn’t pick up a single win while Niemann won five times this season. If we were talking about Rahm’s resume compared to one of Niemann’s that featured maybe just two or three wins, it would be easier to argue in the Spaniard’s favor, but five? Come on.
When it comes down to it, LIV awarded an elite level of consistency (Rahm’s season) over a handful of wins and six finishes outside of the Top 20 (Niemann’s season). For a season-long points race you could argue that’s a fair approach, but something doesn’t sit right about naming a guy with zero wins the individual champion of the year.
Ben Griffin And His Substances
It turns out that Griffin isn’t just an Aviator sunglasses guy, but a big creatine guy as well, and it bit him in the ass at the worst time possible on Sunday afternoon.
The American went viral early on in his final round after four-putting from four feet on his opening hole, something that a Top 20 player in the world simply does not do.
He eventually settled into his round and posted a 1-under 69, which is outrageous given his triple-double start, but his strange day got even stranger when he explained that creatine was the culprit of his early-round disaster.
Is this a two-time PGA Tour winner talking, or a high schooler who just got a gym membership looking to hopefully bench press more than the bar?
The Slow Play Tracker In All Its Glory
Back in January, PGA Tour officials said that they would be more transparent about the pace of play during tournaments during the 2025 season. Slowly but surely, the Tour has stayed true to its word, and appreciatively went all-out with the pace of play information during the BMW Championship with the debut of a new graphic on the NBC broadcast.
During Saturday’s third round, the pace of play graphic made its debut following the Patrick Cantlay-Shane Lowry group after the pair was put on the clock on the front nine.
Cantlay and Lowry’s group eventually picked up their pace and were not handed a slow-play penalty, but the new graphic on the broadcast undoubtedly added a new accountability and entertainment factor.
We need more of this, and it should be very simple for the broadcast to produce this graphic in real-time whenever a group, especially one with notable players, falls behind on the clock.
