Final Takeaways From Royal Portrush

Scottie Scheffler is the best player since Tiger Woods.

“I don't think we thought the golfing world would see someone as dominant as Tiger come through so soon, and here's Scottie sort of taking that throne of dominance,” world No. 3 Xander Schauffele said after his Sunday round. “You can't even say he's on a run. He's just been killing it for over two years now.”

“He is the bar that we're all trying to get to,” opined world No. 2 Rory McIlroy. “You could argue that there's only maybe two or three players in the history of the game that have been on a run, the one that Scottie's been on here for the last 24 to 36 months. Incredibly impressive.”

The gulf between Scheffler and the rest of the world feels as large now as it’s ever felt, so much so that other top-ranked players openly acknowledge the separation. He’s better than every other player in the world, and it isn’t close.

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Scottie’s performance at this Open Championship represents arguably his most complete display of dominance in his career. Following mistakes tee-to-green on both the sixth and seventh holes, Scheffler buried 15-foot and 16-foot par savers on each hole. Those were the types of putts Scheffler never used to make, the misses that resulted in T-7 finishes despite shredding fields tee-to-green. Once his glaring weakness, Scheffler’s putter became a reliable weapon throughout the week. He gained more than 8.5 strokes putting on the greens, the second-highest total in the field.  

With this Open Championship win, Scheffler now has four major championships to his name. Predicting his career major total is an impossible task. However, if the putting improvement persists beyond this year, it’s difficult to imagine him failing to pick off at least three or four more major wins over the next five or six years, vaulting him among the most accomplished major winners of all time. We know how golf goes; Scheffler may never win another major championship. But not only is it well within reach for Scottie to go down as a top-10 player of all time, at this point it seems more likely than not.  

Love or hate Scottie’s perspective on not being fulfilled by golf, it’s a mindset fueling the best, most consistent performances in golf.

Scottie started the week with a five-minute monologue on how winning golf tournaments doesn’t fulfill him, a soliloquy that was either deeply profound or wholly incoherent, depending on your interpretation. He ended the week with a Claret Jug and a fourth major championship, his 20th worldwide win in the last four years.

“Right now I’m the best player in the world…I’m sitting here with the trophy,” Scheffler said in his post-tournament press conference. “We’re going to start all over in Memphis, back to even par, show goes on.”

MORE: 2025 Open Championship Hub

Scottie doesn’t get too caught up in results. He focuses on the present and the work that’s required to stay at the top of the game. As much as some people might like to hear Scottie speak less nihilistically about the sport, an athlete’s ultimate responsibility is to put the best version of themselves on the field. If distancing his on-course results from his identity empowers him to be the most dominant player in the world, so be it. The show goes on, and Scottie is the only player consistently dominating the show.

Royal Portrush provides a strong test of professional golf.

It can be difficult to discern how much blowback a golf course is receiving through the prism of social media, but I saw enough Royal Portrush criticism over the past few days to conclude it has a significant number of detractors. Some contingent of people seemed to think the golf course wasn’t sufficiently difficult. Had the wind blown this weekend as it normally does, I suspect there would have been nearly unanimous praise for the golf course.

The more wind blows, the more players’ shot patterns widen. A golf course must be playable under all possible weather conditions. Consequently, when difficult conditions fail to materialize on a links course, it tends to play too wide and not challenging enough for the best players in the world. That’s just the way it goes.

When evaluating a venue, the question should be: How reliably can we expect windy conditions to show up? I’m not a meteorologist, nor am I intimately familiar with the weather patterns in mid-July in Northern Ireland, but given the golf course’s location and proximity to the sea, I’m confident we can generally expect windy conditions at Royal Portrush.

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Despite the absence of wind, Royal Portrush still provided a solid test. Steep runoff areas surrounding the putting surfaces, paired with well-designed green complexes, imposed a legitimate penalty for missing approaches in the wrong spots. Additionally, wide misses off the tee were punished appropriately.

The problem, if there was one, was that golfers didn’t miss very often this week because the wind was about as mild as it possibly could have been. Had we witnessed four days of windy championship golf at Royal Portrush, the entire dialogue around the golf course would have been completely different.

Hosting significant golf tournaments in the home country of active legends should be a priority.‍

As Brendan eloquently wrote on Friday, watching Rory McIlroy play in front of his home crowd this week was a once-in-a-generation opportunity. Fans of all ages climbed atop sand dunes, shouting at Rory and hoping for just a glimpse of him. I’ve never been emotional before at a professional golf tournament, but I was overcome with emotion at the sights and sounds of the ovation that McIlroy received walking up the 18th hole on Thursday and Sunday evening. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen in pro golf and helped me appreciate what Rory must have been feeling on the first tee box back in 2019.

Tournament venue selection is a complicated process with a thousand moving parts. But when opportunities arise to host high-profile golf tournaments in the home country of one of the best players to ever touch a club, we should seize those opportunities.