Walking off the par-3 13th hole in the final round of the Memorial Tournament, Scottie Scheffler could have looked up at the leaderboard and exhaled. 

He was leading by four. 

In the CBS broadcast booth, tournament host Jack Nicklaus said he and Tiger Woods claimed a bulk of their victories playing for pars late on Sunday. 

Scheffler did just that. With a final-round 2-under 70, he won back-to-back titles at the Memorial, becoming the only player to accomplish that feat at Muirfield Village since Woods’s three-peat (1999–2001). 

The world No. 1, who won for the third time in the last five weeks, is a perfect 9 for 9 on Tour when holding a 54-hole lead. Trevor Immelman on the telecast called Scheffler the Mariano Rivera of golf. 

On Saturday, though, it looked like Scheffler needed to keep his foot on the gas pedal, with any chance of nabbing the lead entering Sunday.

Halfway through the third round, Ben Griffin, who won last week at Colonial, had a six-stroke lead over Scheffler. But that evaporated in a flash—and Scheffler began the final round leading Griffin by a stroke. 

Griffin stayed on Scheffler’s tail throughout the front nine, but bogeys on Nos. 12 and 13 put Scheffler on cruise control. Griffin, however, made it interesting with an eagle-birdie stretch on Nos. 15 and 16 and got within two of the three-time major winner.  

Then, a double on No. 17 by Griffin essentially handed Scheffler the victory, but it wouldn’t have mattered anyway—Scheffler was never going to falter. In the end, he finished at 10 under par, four ahead of Griffin.

And for the second straight year, Scheffler exited the par-4 18th to a handshake by Nicklaus, perhaps the most coveted greeting in all of golf.

Now, Scheffler has 16 PGA Tour titles. Since winning his first at the 2022 WM Phoenix Open, the 28-year-old is the fourth-fastest player to 16 wins after their first, behind Woods, Nicklaus and Sam Snead. 

Twenty-five years ago, when Woods became the Memorial’s first-ever back-to-back champion, his next start was the U.S. Open, in which he won at Pebble Beach by a historic 15 strokes. 

The next time Scheffler will tee it up competitively will be at Oakmont’s U.S. Open in two weeks. 

Will he follow in Woods’s footsteps again? It seems every time Scheffler plays, he does.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Scottie Scheffler Wins Memorial Tournament, Joining Tiger Woods in Rare Air.

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