The unique pressure of being golf's top three at the Masters

AUGUSTA, Ga. — With the future of men’s professional golf still hanging in the balance, all eyes are on the trio of superstars who arrive at Augusta National Golf Club on very different paths.

Scottie Scheffler might be No. 1 in the Official World Golf Ranking, but Jon Rahm was arguably the most dominant golfer before jumping to LIV Golf in December. Then there’s Rory McIlroy, who has tried for nearly a decade to achieve another major championship win. If professional golfers’ careers are truly defined by winning the Masters, PGA Championship, U.S. Open and The Open, it’s past time for McIlroy to win one again.

“I think that’s what’s making this Masters and many other majors so much fun, not only for me and for players but for spectators, is for all of us to be able to play together again and showcase what we’re capable of,” Rahm said.

As golfers from both sides reunite at the 88th Masters, there’s more than a green jacket on the line for the top three players in the world.

For McIlroy, it’s the culmination of his career and whether his legacy will be on par with the greats of the game like Tiger Woods, Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and others. For Rahm, his 2023 victory at the Masters facilitated his departure from the PGA Tour — a move he hoped would bring the feuding sides together. And for Scheffler, his win at Augusta National two years ago cemented his status as one of the world’s best, and winning a second green jacket would provide the PGA Tour with a bona fide superstar it hasn’t seen since Woods in his prime.

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MCILROY WAS SUPPOSED to be that superstar. One of the most revealing scenes from the second season of the Netflix series “Full Swing” comes in the first episode, when McIlroy is walking through the locker room after tying for seventh (7 strokes behind winner Brooks Koepka) at the PGA Championship at Oak Hill Country Club in Rochester, New York, on May 21.

“My technique is nowhere near where it used to be,” McIlroy tells his caddie, Harry Diamond, and manager, Sean O’Flaherty. “I almost feel like I want to do a complete reboot.”

When O’Flaherty disagrees, McIlroy tells him, “No, I do. I do. Because it’s the only way I feel like I’m going to break through.”

“I think differently,” O’Flaherty says. “What do you want?”

“Like it feels so far away,” McIlroy says. “I’m not at the stage of my life where I feel like I can come out and be doing these two-week boot camps. Like, I feel good enough to be, like, f—ing top 10 in my head, but not good enough to win.”

“Like pull away,” Diamond says.

“Like winning f—ing majors,” McIlroy says.

Perhaps no golfer arrives at Augusta National Golf Club with more pressure this week than McIlroy, who will attempt for the 10th time to complete the career Grand Slam by winning an elusive green jacket. He would become only the sixth player in men’s golf to accomplish the feat. None of the other five — Woods, Ben Hogan, Gene Sarazen, Nicklaus and Gary Player — needed more than three attempts to do it.

Making matters worse, it has been nearly 10 years since McIlroy won his last major at the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky, on Aug. 10, 2014.

Since then, there have been 35 majors played, which were won by 25 different golfers — just not McIlroy. If his drought finally ends on Sunday, it would have been 3,535 days since his last major championship victory, the eighth-longest span between major wins in history.

It’s not like McIlroy hasn’t been contending in the majors. Since 2020, he finished in the top 10 in 67% of his 15 starts, which is tied with Will Zalatoris for the highest rate of any player, according to ESPN Stats & Information. McIlroy finished in the top 10 in seven of the past eight majors, including solo seconds at the 2022 Masters and 2023 U.S. Open. Since McIlroy’s last major championship victory, he has 20 top-10 finishes since 2015, most of any player (Koepka is second with 17).

“I look at my record in the majors over the last couple of years, and I’ve definitely started to perform much more consistently in them,” McIlroy said. “Look, I’m under no illusion that the clock is ticking and it has been 10 years since I’ve won one of them. I’ve had chances and those just haven’t [gone] my way. I just need to keep putting myself in those positions and sooner or later it’s going to happen.”

McIlroy, 34, believed one of his best chances to finally win at Augusta National came last year. He won the Tour Championship at the end of the 2022 season, then added two more victories at the CJ Cup in South Carolina and the Hero Dubai Desert Classic. He was playing some of the best golf of his career.

Inexplicably, McIlroy carded a 72-77 at the Masters and missed the cut by 3 strokes.

“I honestly thought I was going to have the best Masters I’ve ever had,” McIlroy said last May.

The performance weighed on McIlroy so heavily that the next week he skipped the RBC Heritage at Hilton Head Island. The decision cost him $3 million of his Player Impact Program bonus for skipping a second signature event.

Later, McIlroy said it wasn’t only the latest Masters disappointment that caused him to take a mental health break. He also needed time away from being one of the PGA Tour’s strongest voices during its battle with the LIV Golf League. McIlroy ended up stepping down from the tour’s policy board on Nov. 14.

McIlroy was once one of LIV Golf’s biggest critics, but he has since softened his stance about punishing former PGA Tour players who left and might want to come back in the future, and about prohibiting LIV Golf players from competing in the Ryder Cup.

While McIlroy no longer has a seat at the table with Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, which has funded LIV Golf the past three years, he has still been vocal about the sport’s future and its precarious position with fans and TV viewers as money and power continue to consume men’s professional golf.

“I think fans are getting fatigued of it, and I think the more and more we go down this route, the more people are just going to tune in four times a year [for the major championships], which is no good for anyone — no good for golf,” McIlroy said. “That just can’t happen, so we need to figure it out.”

This season, McIlroy tied for second at the Dubai Invitational and then won the Hero Dubai Desert Classic for a record fourth time. But his success in the Middle East didn’t carry over to the PGA Tour, where he didn’t have a top-10 finish in his first five starts.

After tying for 19th at the Players Championship and struggling with his iron play, McIlroy spent about four hours in Las Vegas with swing guru Butch Harmon, who coached Woods and others. McIlroy insisted it was nothing more than getting a “second set of eyes” on his swing.

The decision seemed to pay off last week when McIlroy tied for third at the Valero Texas Open. Justin Ray of Twenty First Group noted that McIlroy averaged 1.88 strokes gained: approach per round at TPC San Antonio, his best average in nearly five years.

“I definitely feel like I’m in a better place than I was a few weeks ago,” McIlroy said Sunday. “Through the Florida swing, there was just a lot of volatility in my game, some good, some bad, quite a few big numbers, so just trying to tidy that up.”

McIlroy altered his pre-Masters routine by taking a scouting trip to Augusta National Golf Club on April 1-2. He wasn’t scheduled to arrive in Augusta until Tuesday and planned to play only two nine-hole practice rounds before Thursday’s opening round.

As far as the rest of McIlroy’s plan to end his major drought and finally win a green jacket?

“Control of myself, control of my emotions and my thoughts,” McIlroy said. “If I can control those, it makes the physical control of everything a lot easier and a lot more simple. Yeah, just to me next week is all about discipline, about staying in control of yourself and in control of what you can control. If I can do that well, then the rest will follow.”

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BY JUMPING TO the LIV Golf League, Rahm hoped to take control of not only his career but also what the future ecosystem of men’s professional golf might look like. Rahm arrived at Augusta National Golf Club on Monday as the defending Masters champion — and the new face of the LIV Golf League.

Nearly eight months after Rahm became the fourth Spanish golfer to win a green jacket, he signed a multiyear contract on Dec. 7 reportedly worth more than $350 million to jump from the PGA Tour to the LIV Golf League.

While Rahm wasn’t the first former major championship winner to change sides in the ongoing battle in men’s professional golf, his defection was perhaps the biggest blow to the PGA Tour.

On June 6, the PGA Tour and Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund reached a framework agreement to form an alliance. Poaching Rahm from the PGA Tour showed that the PIF wasn’t messing around.

Rahm told the BBC last week that he believed his decision might have been a “tipping point” for the sides to get a deal done. But so far a deal hasn’t been finalized between the sides.

“I understood the weight that [my] decision could have and the impact it could have,” Rahm said. “I understood that perfectly and that’s why it wasn’t an easy decision. The balance of golf could be disturbed a little bit.

“Luckily in my career, especially last year, I accomplished a lot and I got to be one of the bigger names in golf. There are few active players that could have had a bigger impact than myself in that sense. Not to be patting myself on the back too much, but I understood the position I was in.”

Rahm, 29, would become only the fourth back-to-back winner in Masters history, joining Woods (2001-02), Nick Faldo (1989-90) and Nicklaus (1965-66). Faldo and Player (1962) were the only international players to finish in the top 10 as defending champion.

It wouldn’t be lost on anyone that Rahm would be the first player from LIV Golf to win the Masters. “I think if a LIV player were to win, including myself, I think we’d all be extremely excited and happy for whoever that individual is,” LIV Golf captain Bryson DeChambeau said. “I’m not so sure [about] the other side, but that’s for them to make up their own emotional state, I guess you could say. From a negotiation standpoint, I don’t think it’ll change much to be honest with you.”

It will be Rahm’s first competition against the PGA Tour players he left behind. He’s expecting the same cordial welcome LIV Golf League players received at Augusta National Golf Club the past two years.

“I mean, the Masters is the Masters,” Rahm said Sunday, after his Legion XIII squad won its second team title at Trump National Doral in Miami. “I don’t think there’s any difference whether you play the PGA Tour, LIV, European Tour or Sunshine Tour. It really doesn’t make a difference. You could have asked me the same question last year with some of the LIV players coming in. I wouldn’t say there’s anything added to it, no.”

Rahm would join his idols, Seve Ballesteros and José María Olazábal, as Spanish golfers who won two Masters titles.

Will it be more difficult for Rahm trying to defend his title than it was attempting to win his first green jacket?

“I think there’s an argument to be made for both,” Rahm said. “Having the comfort of having been there and having done it and knowing that you can do it again, but also having the hunger to get it done for the first time. I think the second one is harder to overcome because sometimes wanting it too much can be detrimental, but if you get past that and you can keep the hunger, then having done it already I think is definitely a positive.

“There’s a lot of people that have done it twice. Some people have done it quickly, some other players have had to wait years, but there’s a few great champions that haven’t been able to do it, so I’m hoping I can join Seve and Ollie and get to two.”

Some have questioned whether Rahm has played enough golf this season — and in enough pressure situations — to have his best form at Augusta National this week. Last year, Rahm played eight times before the Masters, winning three times at the Sentry Tournament of Champions, American Express and the Genesis before the end of February.

This season, Rahm has played in five LIV Golf League events. He finished in the top 10 in each of them, including a tie for fourth in Miami last week. He was at least 2 strokes behind the winner in each tournament.

“You know, I think a lot of guys were thinking that Jon would come out here straightaway and win everything,” LIV Golf League captain Cameron Smith told ESPN. “I think maybe even he’s realized that it’s a lot harder out here than what probably he anticipated.”

The 2023 Masters was Rahm’s last victory on any tour. After surviving a 30-hole marathon on Sunday at Augusta National to defeat Koepka and Phil Mickelson by 4 strokes, he played in 10 PGA Tour events but didn’t win.

Faldo, a six-time major championship winner, wonders whether Rahm will be able to ramp up his intensity this week.

“He has been playing resort courses in shorts for the past couple of months and hasn’t really been tested yet,” Faldo told the Sky Sports Golf podcast. “He’s a hell of a player, but he’s going to have to make a little bit of effort to step it up and get the right intensity. Whether coming to defend [to prove] you can do it, or he’s just not quite sharp enough because he hasn’t tested himself quite as much, we’ll have to wait and see.”

Rahm was ranked No. 1 in the world when he captured a green jacket. He’s now No. 3 in the Official World Golf Ranking behind Scheffler and McIlroy.

Rahm has the best career scoring average (70.5) in Masters history among more than 400 players who have played at least 15 rounds, according to ESPN Stats & Information. He finished in the top 10 in five of his past seven starts at Augusta National.

This week is another chance to show the world that he’s still the best golfer on the planet.

“Yeah, I’m fully aware of where Scottie is,” Rahm said. “I’ve seen it the last two years. I’m fully aware where he is. He’s a great competitor, and he is somebody that when you’re under the gun and you’ve got to get it done, he’s been able to get it done. I feel like I don’t need to be playing next to him to know what’s going on.”

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FOR THE FIRST time in nearly eight months, Rahm and Scheffler will be playing next to each other in a major championship this week. The mild-mannered Scheffler hadn’t said much about the LIV Golf-PGA Tour feud until the Players Championship, when he blamed the golfers who left for fracturing the sport — and that would include Rahm.

“If the fans are upset, then look at the guys that left,” Scheffler said. “We had a tour, we were all together, and the people that left are no longer here. At the end of the day, that’s where the splintering comes from.”

The last time Rahm and Scheffler were together at Augusta National Golf Club before this week, Scheffler was slipping a green jacket on Rahm at Butler Cabin following the Spaniard’s victory on April 9, 2023.

Rahm had the upper hand on Scheffler again at the Ryder Cup in Rome in late September. Even though they halved their Sunday singles match, Rahm went 2-0-2 to earn three points in the European team’s dominant 16½-11½ victory at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club.

Scheffler went 0-2-2, earning just one point, and broke down after he and Koepka were blitzed 9 and 7 in Saturday morning foursomes by Norway’s Viktor Hovland and Sweden’s Ludvig Åberg.

Much has changed for both Rahm and Scheffler since then.

While Rahm has been competing in the LIV Golf League and is not earning world-ranking points for his finishes, Scheffler has regained his place as the No. 1 golfer in the world. Over the past month, Scheffler won the Arnold Palmer Invitational by 5 strokes, then became the first golfer to win back-to-back Players Championship titles by holding off Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman by 1 stroke in his next start.

Scheffler nearly made it three consecutive victories in as many starts two weeks ago, but he missed birdie putts of 11 feet and 5 feet on the final two holes to lose to Stefan Jaeger by 1 shot at the Texas Children’s Houston Open.

After going nearly a year without a victory, Scheffler won twice in the past month. It’s reminiscent of his epic heater in 2022 when he captured three victories in six weeks before claiming his first major championship at the Masters. He became the sixth-youngest player to reach No. 1 since the world ranking began in 1986.

After Rahm ascended to No. 1 after his Masters victory, Scheffler regained the top spot by tying for second at the 2023 PGA Championship and hasn’t relinquished it since.

Scheffler is the overwhelming betting favorite to win the Masters with his odds currently listed at +450 by ESPN BET. According to ESPN Stats & Information, no player has opened the Masters with odds shorter than 5-to-1 to win a green jacket since Woods in 2013.

By nearly every ballstriking metric, Scheffler has dominated the PGA Tour this season. He leads the tour in strokes gained: total (2.81) and approach (1.35), he’s second off the tee (.903) and fifth around the green (.547). Scheffler also leads the tour in greens in regulation (76.1%), scoring average (67.39) and birdies per round (5.48).

Scheffler’s only shortcoming has been his putting, but even that area of his game seems to be trending in the right direction again after he switched to a mallet putter.

Those numbers have caused others to compare Scheffler to Woods in his prime, from 1997 to 2009, when the 82-time PGA Tour winner captured 14 of his 15 major championship victories.

Scheffler would join Woods (2001, 2002) as the only players in Masters history to win the event twice while atop the world rankings. He would also join Woods as the only golfers to win the Players Championship and Masters in the same season.

Scheffler laughs at the suggestion of him being as good as Woods. After winning the Players Championship at TPC Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Florida, he recalled how a fan recently reminded him of Woods’ dominance. After Scheffler hit a tee shot at the Genesis Invitational at Riviera Country Club in February, the fan yelled, “Congrats on being No. 1, Scottie. Eleven more years to go. Eleven more years to go.”

Woods was ranked No. 1 in the world for 281 consecutive weeks from June 2005 to October 2010 and 683 weeks overall — more than 13 years.

“Anytime you can be compared to Tiger I think is really special, but, I mean, the guy stands alone, I think, in our game,” Scheffler said. “He really does. This is my eighth tournament win now out here, I’ve tied him in Players Championships. Outside of that, I got 14 more majors and 70-some PGA Tour events to catch up.”

Still, it seems nearly inevitable, given his recent form, that Scheffler will be in contention for a green jacket on Sunday. While Scheffler has won eight times on tour in the past 26 months, he still has only one major championship victory. Getting a second one would cement his status as the best player in the world.

And if that’s not enough pressure, the PGA Tour desperately needs one of its superstars to win.