How a round with Tiger shaped Scheffler
By Ron Green Jr. • August 22, 2025
ATLANTA, GEORGIA | It was Sunday, Nov. 15, 2020, and in the COVID-altered world, the final round of the only fall Masters tournament was being played with almost no one on site other than the players and a select few observers who felt like they had the game’s most famous tournament to themselves.
Sitting 11 shots behind eventual winner Dustin Johnson, Scottie Scheffler found himself paired with Tiger Woods for the only time in his PGA Tour career. Scheffler was in his second full year on the tour and, unaware of it at the time, about to have the arc of his career altered.
“We’re in 20th place or whatever going into Sunday at the Masters, Tiger has won five Masters, he’s got no chance of winning the tournament. Then we showed up on the first hole and I was watching him read his putt, and I was like, oh, my gosh, this guy is in it right now,” Scheffler said.
“I can’t tell you the look on his face when we got to the first green, and I look over … and this guy is just locked in, and I was taken aback. I was like, holy smokes. Then we got to the second hole, and he had this chip shot and he looked at it like it was an up-and-down to win the tournament. I’m like, this is incredible. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life.”
Still growing into the PGA Tour, Scheffler said he sometimes “eased” his way into tournaments. There is a truism that a shot on Thursday counts just as much as one on the final nine holes on Sunday and Scheffler always understood that.
But watching Woods up close, even though he had no chance of winning, was revelatory. Scheffler has always been grounded in his swing fundamentals but watching the master at work – at the Masters – led Scheffler to re-evaluate his approach.
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