{"id":776199,"date":"2026-02-20T02:55:11","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T02:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/776199\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T02:55:11","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T02:55:11","slug":"scheffler-takes-enviable-run-to-riviera","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/776199\/","title":{"rendered":"Scheffler takes enviable run to Riviera"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"\"Scottie Scheffler has made three starts this season and finished first, tied for third and tied for fourth. Matthew Huang, Icon Sportswire via Getty Images<\/strong><\/p>\n

Let\u2019s take a moment to consider \u2013 again and not for the last time \u2013 just how good Scottie Scheffler has been already this young season.<\/p>\n

In three starts, Scheffler has won the American Express, tied for third in the WM Phoenix Open after shooting 73 in the first round and tied for fourth at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am last week at Pebble Beach after opening with a flat 72.<\/p>\n

Now let\u2019s take it back a little more.<\/p>\n

In his last five official starts in 2025, Scheffler won three times with a T3 and a T4 tucked in there as well.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s eight consecutive starts with four wins and four top-four finishes. Scheffler is also approaching the one-year anniversary of his last finish outside the top-10, which was a T20 at the Players Championship last March.<\/p>\n

Death, taxes and Scottie Scheffler.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It could have been easy for Scheffler to exhale either of the last two weeks when he found himself 10 strokes off the lead after 18 holes. Instead, Scheffler did what he does so well \u2013 stayed true to himself and how he plays.<\/p>\n

Scheffler has talked often about his competitive fire, whether it\u2019s playing pickleball or ping-pong or golf with his friends in Dallas. It is his eternal flame. And as much as his fundamentals are the foundation of his brilliance, Scheffler\u2019s competitiveness and sense of achievement underpin the swings he makes.<\/p>\n

\u201cI look at the way I grew up like playing all different sports, competing with my buddies, and I always had, like, a rational confidence to where I was going to somehow figure out a way to beat my buddies in whatever it is, besides video games,\u201d Scheffler said Wednesday at the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut if we\u2019re going to play like tennis, pickleball, ping-pong, basketball, like, I love competing. I love challenging myself and the people around me in kind of whatever it is. I love competing. I love having fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

He doesn\u2019t like getting beat, not that it has happened often in recent months, but he has learned to accept what he can\u2019t control.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Scheffler was reminded of a moment two years ago at Riviera when he was so frustrated by his putting that he threw his golf ball into the trees walking off one green. It was shortly thereafter that Scheffler went to a TaylorMade Spider putter and he has seemed practically unbeatable since.<\/p>\n

The stoicism Scheffler conveys tends to hide his intensity. He doesn\u2019t like getting beat, not that it has happened often in recent months, but he has learned to accept what he can\u2019t control.<\/p>\n

\"\"Scheffler\u2019s stoic nature sometimes hides his intensity. Mike Mulholland, Getty Images<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the tournament ends, one thing I\u2019ve had a lot of growth in since I was a kid is being able to take my hat off, shake hands, say \u2018good job\u2019 and then be done with it \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cYou look at a guy like Collin [Morikawa] last week. I\u2019ve been competing against Collin since we were like 14 years old. He wins a tournament, he announces [his wife is] pregnant \u2026 it\u2019s such a cool moment to see a guy who\u2019s played really good golf over the last few years and hasn\u2019t quite gotten the results and the wins, but he\u2019s played pretty consistent golf, and then he gets to announce that he\u2019s having a kid. It\u2019s this moment, it\u2019s like, wow.<\/p>\n

\u201cI competed as hard as I could, got beat, and it\u2019s like, man, that\u2019s awesome. You won, congrats. You\u2019re having a baby, even bigger congrats.\u201d<\/p>\n

Riviera is soggy this week, inundated by a series of storms coming off the Pacific, softening the edge on one of the game\u2019s classic layouts. The George C. Thomas design, which will host the 2026 U.S. Women\u2019s Open, the 2028 Olympics and the 2031 U.S. Open, exemplifies the notion that the most thorough challenges don\u2019t need water hazards and out of bounds to define their difficulty.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at this golf course and you look at it on paper, it seems kind of easy,\u201d Scheffler said. \u201cThen you start playing it and you\u2019re like, hit a ball in the rough on [No. 2] and you\u2019re like, \u2018man, this hole is kind of hard.\u2019 Then you don\u2019t hit the fairway on [No. 3] and you\u2019re like, \u2018oh, shoot, I don\u2019t know how I am going to hit the ball on the green here.\u2019 And then the golf course just eats away at you over time.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like this golf course can be about as frustrating to play as any on tour just with the little tricks that it has to it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\u201cI think this place is a good case study on certain holes where you don\u2019t have to make golf courses overly long if you want to make them difficult.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s a whole new thing in the game of golf.\u201d \u2013 Scottie Scheffler<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Riviera has no water hazards but it features a collection of memorable holes. The par-3 sixth is defined by a bunker in the middle of the putting surface and the famous 10th may be the greatest short par-4 in the world.<\/p>\n

It requires patience and precision and has a spot on almost every list of architectural gems in the game.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think this place is a good case study on certain holes where you don\u2019t have to make golf courses overly long if you want to make them difficult,\u201d Scheffler said. \u201cI think that\u2019s a whole new thing in the game of golf. That\u2019s what modern golf course designers are doing where they are taking out trees making things bigger, wider, and it doesn\u2019t necessarily make them harder just because you make a golf hole longer.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the eighth hole out here is a really good example of a short hole that\u2019s quite difficult, and it gives you a lot of options as well. You can play it up the right, you can play it up the left, and you see guys doing different kinds of things there. I think that\u2019s something that\u2019s interesting about a golf course, when you have different options.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u00a9 2026 Global Golf Post LLC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Scottie Scheffler has made three starts this season and finished first, tied for third and tied for fourth.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":776200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4106],"tags":[226608,2826,4298,226609,4288,79,16,15],"class_list":["post-776199","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-genesis-invitational","tag-golf","tag-pga-tour","tag-riviera-country-club","tag-scottie-scheffler","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116100708910599482","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=776199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/776199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/776200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=776199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=776199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=776199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}