Scottie Scheffler’s mind is his edge – and envy of his peers

What is your edge?

Scottie Scheffler considered the question.

“I try to be as mentally tough as possible,” said Scheffler, who has spent nearly all season atop the FedExCup standings and enters this week’s FedEx St. Jude Championship with a nearly 2,000-point leader over No. 2 Xander Schauffele. “And I feel like, you know, going out and competing has always been my best skill.

"My edge is when I get kind of immersed in the joy of competition,” he added. “Going out there and playing and doing what I love is typically when I play my best golf.”

As we head into the FedExCup Playoffs, there’s a chicken-and-egg question around world No. 1 Scheffler. Is he winning because he’s having fun, having fun because he’s winning, or harnessing a positive feedback loop in which both are true?

Talk of his edge emerged at the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, where Scheffler would earn his fifth title of ’24. He won the Travelers Championship two weeks later to become the first player since Arnold Palmer in 1962 to win six times in a season before July.

Two weeks ago, Scheffler said his goal for the Paris Olympics was, “To have fun.”

Same sentiment, same result: He shot a back-nine 29 and final-round 62 to win the gold medal.

How did we get here? As it turns out, Scheffler had to bring the physical side up a notch to let his mental game really shine.

Not long ago, after a season notable for Scheffler’s numerous close calls, Troy Van Biezen, his strength and conditioning coach, wanted to rule out an endurance problem. In testing the Texan at his facility in Dallas, Van Biezen found inefficiencies in Scheffler’s cardiovascular game.

“As people know, Scottie, he likes to be prepared,” Van Biezen said. “He’s very structured and very regimented. And he knew that was the missing key that we found during the off-season. So, during that off-season, I literally busted his heart in the gym. It was probably one of the toughest summers I took him through. But he knew it was for the better, and we know what happened.”

In short, Scheffler improved his conditioning, which put his implacable mind at ease, and he has busted others’ hearts ever since. Fans have marveled at his magical season – seven wins in his last 12 worldwide starts – and so, too, have his fellow players.

“I watched the end of (the Olympics),” said Jhonattan Vegas, who broke a seven-year win drought at the recent 3M Open. “Obviously that guy is in a different stratosphere right now, he’s living in a different space. What he’s doing with a golf ball, it's kind of fun to watch, right?

“I grew up watching Tiger,” Vegas added, “and it’s pretty similar to a lot of the stuff that Tiger did during all of those years.” (Well, sort of. Woods won six times consecutively in 2000.)

Scheffler has won THE PLAYERS Championship the last two years running, and the Masters and Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard two of the last three years. What’s more, his PGA TOUR-leading 14 top-10s in 16 starts this season speak to a freakish consistency.

“It’s incredible how he does it,” said Sahith Theegala, seventh in the FedExCup standings and likely to make his first U.S. Presidents Cup team. “He's so humble and probably the most competitive person I know. I don't know him incredibly well, but that limit of time I've spent with him is so, so competitive, but in the nicest way.

“… I think for a lot of us, it really is his mental side (that’s worth emulating),” Theegala added.

At times, there have been almost two tournaments in one – the one Scheffler is dominating, as at the RBC Heritage in April, and the one the others are playing. Theegala, who made par at the last to eke out a runner-up finish at the RBC, said, “Everyone is congratulating me on winning our tournament. Scottie was just in a different world.”

Collin Morikawa, whose seven top-10s this season include a runner-up finish to Scheffler at the Memorial, is fourth in the FedExCup standings. Morikawa, too, has marveled at Scheffler’s ability to lock in from the first to the very last ball hit.

“That’s what I’m trying to teach myself and bring out of myself is the tournament doesn’t start because you start playing well and you’re on the hunt,” Morikawa said.

Rarely over the last two years has Scheffler been mentally out of sorts in a stroke-play event. At the 2022 TOUR Championship, Rory McIlroy overcome a six-stroke deficit to beat him in the final round. And at the PGA Championship at Valhalla in May, Scheffler, fresh out of jail and without his usual caddie, was 4-over through four holes of Round 3.

Those two episodes were like watching a cat fail to land on its feet. Was this really happening? We take Scheffler, and his mind, for granted, but he does not. He’s done the work and understands his edge; all that remains now is to stay immersed in the joy.