The Break: Scottie has Tiger-like aura

In partnership with

Scottie wins the BMW Championship

Scottie Scheffler won for the fifth time this season on Sunday, earning a two-shot win over Bob MacIntyre to take the BMW Championship at Caves Valley in Maryland (my home state). The world No. 1 trailed by four coming into the day and won by a deuce. Within three holes, the pair were tied, and Scheffler went up two with a birdie-bogey exchange at the fifth. Scheffler’s card was more dotted with shapes than the Scot’s was, but MacIntyre making birdie to Scheffler’s bogey on the par-5 16th at least made the last two challenging holes potentially intriguing.

Then Scheffler chipped in — truly, perfectly — for birdie to put the tournament away. What a thing of beauty.

So it goes that Scheffler wins the second leg of the FedEx Cup playoffs and gets another $3.6 million on top of the $5 million bonus he was guaranteed as the leader of the points list heading into East Lake.

Scheffler was brilliant, yes, but he made mistakes with avoidable bogeys on Nos. 12 and 14. It wasn’t peerless golf. But what Scheffler has is the secret weapon Tiger and Jack once used so well: reputation. Scheffler is the best closer in the game, and everyone knows it, including Bobby Mac. MacIntyre, who had made approximately 6 miles of putts in the first three rounds, found himself nervous and backing down for the first time in contention in his short PGA Tour career. He tends to meet the moment well, even if he doesn’t win (see: 2025 US Open).

MacIntyre knows, like any professional who surges to the top of the leaderboard on the back of a hot putter, that eventually the putter goes cold (or, at least, more lukewarm). A cold open put Scheffler on level terms before the fun really started. Scheffler pounced on the fifth hole, and that was about it for this generation’s Mariano Rivera.

Scheffler heads into East Lake having won $23 million of the $33 million in bonus money he won last year through taking the FedEx Cup at the Tour Championship and the regular-season points list. What stands in his way now from getting it all is 29 other players in a straight 72-hole shootout at East Lake. If he wins, it would be a 19th official PGA Tour win, a sixth this season and a capper on yet another Player of the Year campaign.

Now, here’s the crazy part. Let’s say Scheffler wins next Sunday. Seems logical to think. He would have to have a four-year run like he’s had — 19 wins, 4 majors — three more times in his career to past Tiger’s major count and Jack’s official win count. I’m not saying it’s not possible, or that what Scheffler has done is anything short of extraordinary. There’s just a lot more of it that has to happen to get to all-time levels.

And now a word from our sponsor

Invest Alongside Kyrie Irving and Travis Kelce

A new media network is giving pro athletes ownership of their content…and they’re inviting fans, too.

That network is PlayersTV.

It’s the first sports media company backed by over 50 legendary athletes including:

• Kyrie Irving

• Chris Paul

• Dwyane Wade

• Travis Kelce

• Ken Griffey Jr.

• And more

PlayersTV is a platform where athletes can tell their own stories, show fans more of who they really are, and connect in a whole new way.

And here’s the kicker: It’s not just athlete-owned—it’s fan-owned, too.

PlayersTV has the potential to reach 300M+ homes and devices through platforms like Amazon, Samsung, and Sling.

And for a limited time, you can invest and become an owner alongside the athletes.

2,200+ fan-investors are already backing PlayersTV. Want in?

I’m Ready to Invest

_{This is a paid advertisement for PlayersTV Regulation CF offering. Please read the offering circular at https://invest.playerstv.com/}

The Links

Check out the latest episode of our series, The Road to French Lick, where we hear from Pinnacle Bank Championship winner Christo Lamprecht and Adrien Dumont de Chassart.

The six US Ryder Cup automatic qualifiers are now set: Scottie Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Russell Henley, JJ Spaun, Harris English and Bryson DeChambeau. Now, the big question is: Which six players (and is captain Keegan Bradley one of them?) round out the team?

Mason Howell won the US Amateur at The Olympic Club on Sunday with a stunning 7-and-6 final victory to become the third-youngest champion in the event’s history — even younger than Tiger Woods was when he won his first of three conseuctive.

Akie Iwai went twinsies with her sister Chisato on Sunday at The Standard Portland Classic on the LPGA Tour, winning by four shots for her breakthrough title just months after Chisato did the same.

Jon Rahm won the LIV Golf individual points race and $18 million in prize money after losing a playoff to Sebastian Munoz (a second playoff loss in a row for Rahm) at their event in the Indy area. Joaquin Niemann won 5 tournaments out of 13, but he also barely or didn’t earn points at all in five events. Rahm never won, but he was runner-up four times and finished out of the top 10 once (his only non-top-10 in two seasons on LIV Golf). What matters more: consistency or dominance?

Please don’t do this (to yourself or others)

I played golf last week at the lovely Resort Course at Grande Dunes in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. It’s one of my favorite places to play, and I had a great time teeing it up. I played as a a single and was paired up with three (well, four, if you count one of the players’ significant other riding along) nice folks. I’ve talked in this newsletter about how I enjoy getting to meet random people through golf, and this was no exception.

However, one of the guys decided he was going to play a 7,200-yard set of tees for his day. He went to that box first, and I decided to play along with him because, at first, I thought it was just going to be us. He fatted his first drive into some mush. He pulled his second drive way left into some condos. He might have taken a 10 on the opener. The next hole was pretty similar. My guess is he was 10 over par after two holes.

People have bad starts and bad days. I played a round this March where I basically forgot how to hit the golf ball. After five or six holes of this madness, I changed my strategy and started taking 50-75 percent swings just to get the ball in the hole. It turned into one of the rounds I’m proudest of as a golfer. But had I been playing from 7,000-plus that day, I absolutely would have moved up a box or two to save myself some pain.

The guy was a paying customer, and he has the right to play from where he feels lines up with his game. But it took until the ninth hole for him to find a fairway (a drive he absolutely piped). He just couldn’t get the club face on the ball that day. He clearly wasn’t having a lot of fun, and that got in the way of the experience the other three people in the group were having. He’d play out of turn, never grab the flagstick in or out of the cup, and he’s slog off on his own.

The point is that golf is supposed to be fun, and flogging yourself by playing the wrong tees (whether it’s because of your form that day or your form for your entire measurable golf career) is not going to help.