When Scottie Scheffler won his first major championship at the 2022 Masters Tournament it was his fourth win of the season and the projections of what he would do for the balance of the year were beyond lofty. Scheffler missed the cut in the PGA a month later and did not win again in 2022. Scheffler has not missed a cut in a major since that short week at Southern Hills and in the 15 major starts since his first green jacket he has won three more and has eight top three finishes and has only finished outside the top ten in the three of those 15 majors.
Jon Rahm broke through to win the Masters for the first time in 2023 but he finished a very flat tied for 50th at the PGA the next month at Oak Hill. Similarly, Rory McIlroy completed the career grand slam with his first Masters title in 2025 but was a disoriented and chippy tied for 47th at the place he’d had the most success in his career, Quail Hollow Club, that staged the 2025 PGA. I asked Rory on Tuesday if he’s surprised that since the PGA has moved to May that no player has managed to pick off two straight in any calendar year beginning in 2019. He told me flatly that he’s not surprised at all considering the particular gravity of winning the Masters for the first time and the challenge of getting back on the horse so quickly the next month for the second major of the year.
When Scottie Scheffler won the Masters in 2024 it was not a new experience and that’s why it seemed reasonable that he could do the quick major two-step at Valhalla. Whether he would or wouldn’t have if he wasn’t so insanely arrested on Friday morning pulling into Valhalla, we will never know. I do know that him wearing an orange jumpsuit and getting a mugshot and 6 hours later signing for a 66 and being three back heading to the weekend is almost as insane as the Louisville police officer who so grossly overstepped the bounds of his authority to slap cuffs on a player obliviously passing through the entry of Valhalla on that Friday morning. Scheffler managed to finish 8th in one of the most dubious chapters in major championship history.
Which gets us to Rory and the PGA 2026. Unlike last year where he went on every talk show and the climbing to the summit without returning to basecamp for another major assent a month later was simply too quick of a turnaround. This year, Rory laid very low for almost three whole weeks, and his introspection was modest and he has declared openly that he’s never been more motivated for the years straight in front of him. Coincidentally, Scheffler and Xander Schauffele both won two majors in the last two calendar years with both of them winning the PGA and the final major of the year, the Open Championship. But Rory is looking to do something that only Jordan Spieth has managed to achieve in the last 24 years and that is to win the first two majors of the year. Noting that when Spieth won the Masters in 2015 the next major was the U.S. Open at Chambers Bay in June of that year. The turnaround for Rory only gives him one start between Augusta and Aronimink but this is not new as it will be the fifth time this decade that he has chosen only to play one event, in Charlotte, between the Masters and the PGA. Rory piled up four majors in a condensed period from 2011 to 2014 before the long odyssey back to major victory last April but he now sits at six majors and the likelihood of him joining the likes of Arnold Palmer, Sam Snead, Harry Vardon and Gene Sarazen with seven come Sunday night is not only a reasonable suggestion, it’s a reasonable possibility.
The PGA is going through a period of adjustment to a newer rotation of courses including their own anchor site next year at Frisco and also since losing their brand of “Glory’s last shot” too many fans are issuing the refrain that the major has an identity crisis. In the big book of golf history the weight of the win is equal to any other major victory by any player but a Rory win sets him into an increasingly elusive and rarified historical space but it could very quickly (because that’s how these majors come now), have him looking for the third leg of a calendar slam at the major he actually wants most now in his career, another U.S. Open, especially at Shinnecock. I know, slow down Gary. I can’t help it ,these majors make us all do things faster than we are used to.