Should the Americans be concerned about Scottie Scheffler in team play the way they once were with Tiger Woods?<\/p>\n
In Woods\u2019 prime, his performances on Ryder Cups never came close to matching the dominance he displayed when he was playing for himself in PGA Tour and major championship golf.<\/p>\n
Woods played 37 Ryder Cup matches in his career and had an eye-opening pedestrian record of just 13-21-3.<\/p>\n
Scheffler, who\u2019s been ranked No. 1 for 156 weeks and has won 13 times in the past two years, is the most dominant player since Woods.<\/p>\n
And yet there was Scheffler in Friday morning\u2019s foursomes getting dusted alongside partner Russell Henley by Europe\u2019s Ludvig Aberg and Matt Fitzpatrick, who entered these matches with a ghastly 1-7 overall record in the Ryder Cup.<\/p>\n
Scheffler, remember, lost by an astonishing 9&7 score while playing alongside Brooks Koepka against Aberg and Viktor Hovland in a 2023 foursomes match two years ago in Rome.<\/p>\n
Scheffler\u2019s only foursomes win came at the Presidents Cup alongside Henley. But he went 0\u20132 with Sam Burns at the 2022 Presidents Cup and 0\u20132 at the 2023 Ryder Cup \u2014 once with Burns and that unfortunate match with Koepka that left him in tears afterward.<\/p>\n
Scottie Scheffler of Team United States reacts to a putt on the fifth hole. Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cIt hurt a little bit because I didn\u2019t feel like I was as prepared as I could have been,\u201d Scheffler said two weeks ago at the Procore Championship of that blowout loss. \u201cSo going into this Cup, I\u2019ve put a lot of work into my game over the last couple years to get ready and to go play this event.\u201d<\/p>\n
In fairness, Scheffler\u2019s partner, Henley, who\u2019s ranked No. 3 in the world, should have had his Huggies on considering how petrified he looked on the big stage in his first Ryder Cup. But Scheffler was not in good form, either.<\/p>\n
Scottie Scheffler during Day 1 of Ryder Cup play. James Marsh\/Shutterstock<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like Russ and I did some good things,\u2019 Scheffler said after the loss on Friday. \u201cWe just didn\u2019t hole enough putts early.\u201d<\/p>\n
They didn\u2019t hole enough putts all match.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe had some chances,\u2019\u2019 Scheffler said. \u201cBut overall, the guys we played, they played a really good round.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Tiger Woods of the USA reacts to a poor tee shot on the 15th hole during the Morning Foursome Matches for The 39th Ryder Cup at Medinah Country Club on September 28, 2012. Getty Images<\/p>\n
Aberg and Fitzpatrick were 5-under par in the 15-hole match. Scheffler and Henley were even par.<\/p>\n
The loss left Scheffler with a 1-6 career record in foursomes, including Ryder Cups and Presidents Cups.<\/p>\n
This is a trend. An alarming one.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Should the Americans be concerned about Scottie Scheffler in team play the way they once were with Tiger…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":256907,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[29108,1430,8656,1505,62,10130,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-256906","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-golf","8":"tag-bethpage-black","9":"tag-golf","10":"tag-ryder-cup","11":"tag-scottie-scheffler","12":"tag-sports","13":"tag-tiger-woods","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115272434580571265","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256906","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=256906"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/256906\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/256907"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=256906"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=256906"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=256906"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}