The Duality of Scottie Scheffler

Nothing brings out the duality of Scottie Scheffler more than an Open Championship. It's the place where his creativity, feel, and unparalleled shotmaking can truly excel. It's also the place where the weather, draw disparity quirk, and the mind of a bouncing ball can send the fair police running to their posts.

It was all on display in Thursday's opening round. The ball control was there and it looked like he might run away with it early in the round, with linksy creativity around the greens and a wonderful mix of trajectories and shot shapes with his irons, such as at the 15th, where he drew one into the wind to put it safely aboard at a place where many of the best rounds going kept missing it right.

By the 17th hole, however, I could hear Scottie muttering to Ted Scott as he walked off the green. "Finally playing good golf and I hit one shot off line and I get punished," he exclaimed to his looper. This was in the heat of battle. He'd just finished the hole, where he caught a horrible lie after hitting a very poor shot from a fairway lie. But he thought someone had stepped on it even and considered taking an unplayable. These are the games you play, however, when you go wandering into the unmaintained dunes of a links setting.

You'd think those kinds of fates might get to Scheffler more frequently at the Open if he is indeed the sheriff of the fair police. The issue may be he is just so good at golf that avoiding some of the dire fates of links golf is quite navigable. The Open had been the major where he posted his worst performances (two quiet top 10s), which are quite rich by any other standards, prior to a dominant win last year.

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This has not been his best season. Putting got spotty at the PGA. His iron play has not been fully up to some of his incredible prior years. The poor shot that sent him into the junk at the 17th was illustrative of that, and the sloppiness here and there has cost him a shot or two and led to a season of close calls. Scottie had great control of his ball-striking on Thursday, but the lost shot on No. 17 left him behind his playing partner, Bryson DeChambeau, and at 2-under 68 at the end of the day. Close, again, but not all the way there, with other misses at the seventh hole and an over-par day on the par 5s.

The good news for Scottie is that a great majority of the day looked like his full flight. As his exasperated quote coming off 17 said, he’s “finally playing good golf.” He’s been pretty good all year, but did he take it up a level in round one?

“If I continue to do what I did today with the ball-striking I'll be in a good spot as the week goes on,” he said before walking off with this. “Golf is played over 72 holes, and I definitely liked what I saw today.”