'The show goes on' - Why Scottie Scheffler will never get too big for his boots

Make no mistake. The American is getting close to being unstoppable when his name appears at the top of a leaderboard, as, of course, was the case when Tiger Woods was in his prime.

Four major titles have now fallen to Scheffler in a short space of time and, though you only need to look at someone like Brooks Koepka, for example, to be reminded that things can change quickly in golf, the sky really does look the limit for the 29-year-old who was born in New Jersey but now lives in Texas.

“I've said it for a long time, golf is not how I identify myself,” said Scheffler on Sunday night as the Claret Jug sat on a table beside him. “I don't identify myself by winning tournaments, chasing trophies, being famous or whatever it is.

“When I go home, there's two Chipotles (a restaurant chain) that I eat at. Actually not really two anymore. There's one right where I grew up, kind of near the SMU (Southern Methodist University) campus. If I was to go to that Chipotle and try to eat nowadays, it would be very difficult for me. There's another one in a different part of town that I'm not going to tell you where it is, but if I go there, nobody recognises me ever (laughing).

“So famous is just one of those things. In some circles, like right now I'm the best player in the world. This week I was the best player in the world. I'm sitting here with the trophy. But we're going to start all over in Memphis (where his next event, the FedEx St Jude Championship is taking place next month), back to even-par, show goes on.”

It was strange to think that Scheffler turned the final round in Northern Ireland into a procession on Sunday when he hadn’t even been in the field when the Claret Jug event had made its eagerly-awaited return to the County Antrim venue in 2019. His rise over the past few years has been meteoric, to say the least.

“Obviously he won a US Junior, like he was a great junior, but I think maybe after he beat Jon Rahm in the (2021) was when he knew didn't have to do anything different, and he's good enough to win any week,” observed 2016 Open winner Jordan Spieth, who grew up playing with Scheffler.

Though Scheffler thinks they are “silly”, comparisons are being made between Scheffler and Woods more and more. Spieth, though, believes they are different in some ways. “He doesn't care to be a superstar,” added the man who now has Scheffler as a rival in the battle to become the game’s next career grand slam winner - Spieth needing the PGA Championship to complete the set and Scheffler requiring a US Open.

“He's not transcending the game like Tiger did. He's not bringing it to a non-golf audience necessarily. He doesn't want to go do the stuff that a lot of us do corporately, anything like that.

“He just wants to get away from the game and separate the two because I know at one time he felt it was too much, that he was taking it with him. I don't know what it was, but he has hobbies. He's always with his family. They're always doing stuff. I think it's more so the difference in personality from any other superstar that you've seen in the modern era and maybe in any sport. I don't think anybody is like him.”

In his bid to close the gap on Scheffler, Bob MacIntyre asked his caddie, Mike Burrow, to take a microscopic look at the world No 1’s statistics, revealing last week that it had been a short exercise. “Mike stopped after a couple of stats,” revealed MacIntyre of his trusty looper quickly realising that it would be better for him to be looking at the No 2.

It’s by no means luck that Scheffler is miles ahead in those rankings and looking as though he could become one of the game’s greats. He’s worked hard and his peers know that. “Scottie's in a league of his own right now,” said two-time US Open Bryson DeChambeau. “I played with him a lot in college, and he was not that good, so he's figured out a lot of stuff since then. It's really impressive to see and something we can all learn from for sure.”