With another off week on the docket before we head to Rome for the Ryder Cup, let’s indulge in another annual tradition of predicting the year’s four major championships. In part one I will cover the Masters and PGA Championship, and in part two (scheduled for Friday), I’ll cover the U.S. Open and Open Championship. Let’s dive in!
The Masters
Winner: Scottie Scheffler
Back-up pick: Xander Schauffele
I suppose we should start here. Winning the Masters in back to back years is incredibly rare. In fact, it’s only happened on three occasions. Jack Nicklaus in 1965 and 1966, Nick Faldo in 1989 and 1990, and Tiger Woods in 2001 and 2002. On the contrary, I was rather surprised to find out how common it was for a Masters champion to win two years after his victory. Horton Smith first accomplished this in 1934 and 1936. Ben Hogan did it in 1951 and 1953. Sam Snead did it again in 1952 and 1954. Arnold Palmer did it in 1958 and 1960, before winning every other year up until 1966! Palmer won four green jackets in an eight year period between 1958 and 1966, but never on back-to-back occasions. Jack Nicklaus snuck in there on odd years and won both in 1963 and 1965. Seve Ballesteros came incredibly close, winning his second Masters three years after his first, as did Tom Watson, Gary Player, Jack Nicklaus, and Tiger Woods, on countless occasions. Phil Mickelson completed the feat as well, winning in 2004 and 2006. Even Bubba Watson accomplished this as well, winning in 2012 and 2014. Add it all up, and on nine separate occasions, a player who has won the Masters also won it two years later.
We know this event is incredibly kind to its champions. We’ve seen Fred Couples, Nick Faldo, Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and countless other green jacket holders contend at Augusta well past their prime. Hell, Phil Mickelson almost won last year with a belly full of Ozempic. Point being, once players get their first, their work rarely tends to be done. Even players such as Byron Nelson, Seve Ballesteros, and Jose Maria Olazabal were all able to nab a second green jacket within a five year period of their first. It’s almost the antithesis of the Rory McIlroy predicament. A reverse scar tissue theory, I suppose. Close calls make it harder, but a single cross of the finish line alleviates the pressure. There remains an alarmingly strong trend that players who win the Masters, struggle in their title defense, and then proceed to follow up their victory with incredibly strong performances, often wins, over the next five years. This brings us back to not Jon Rahm, but Scottie Scheffler.
Bear with me on a walk down unquantifiable narrative street. Scheffler was my pick to win the Open Championship. Not just because of his course fit or gaudy ball-striking numbers. It simply felt like the most “fair” outcome for the final major championship of the year. Scheffler’s 2023 was the best ball-striking season of the strokes gained era, and yet I can almost guarantee it will be lost to history. Whether that’s fair or unfair can be litigated on another occasion, but his inability to nag a major championship last year looms large. As a self-admitted slave to the numbers, this reality unequivocally bums me out. I’m not certain we will ever see a player strike the ball at the level that Scheffler did in 2023. None of this is even coming from a massive Scheffler fan either. I find his style of play a bit monotonous and dull. And yet, it only felt fair that he would walk away from his historic 2023 season as the last man on standing on one of the four weeks that will actually be accounted for in the annals of history. This reality is better met with pragmatism than cynicism. Golf is rarely fair, and we were instead given two of what may become the most unassuming major champions in recent history in Wyndham Clark and Brian Harman.
Yet if we are thinking about the most likely spot for Scottie Scheffler to enact his revenge, the Master remains far and away the most likely spot. There isn’t really a golf course on earth that Scheffler isn’t an immaculate fit at, but for what it’s worth, Augusta is right up his alley. In my gathering, the four main crucial components of Augusta are power off the tee, long iron play, creativity around the greens and the ability chip off short grass, and lag putting. Scheffler checks every box with flying colors. He’s gained over six strokes ball-striking in his last three appearances at Augusta, and even last year, despite a strong trend indicating that defending champions struggle, Scheffler still finished 10th. He actually hit the ball better last year than he did en route to victory in 2022. In all four appearances, Scheffler has gained over a stroke around the greens, and he’s shown a comfortability on the greens as well, gaining over 1.9 strokes putting in two of four appearances. Even amidst a terrible season with the flat-stick, Scheffler’s lag putting was never the issue. Scheffler ranked second on the PGA Tour last year in approach putting. It’s just the problems inside eight feet that he needs to clean up.
Scheffler will also be making his fifth appearance at Augusta, which is when players really start to hit their groove at Augusta. The peak window of strokes gained at Augusta is between a players’ fifth and 14th appearances. For what it’s worth, I do not expect Scheffler’s level of ball-striking dominance to continue in 2024. It was clearly unsustainable, and I’m not sure a run of that magnitude will ever be repeated. Yet I don’t expect him to fall off a cliff either, and we should see some positive regression with the flat-stick too. Scheffler is capable of great putting. We’ve seen it on countless occasions. He gained over three strokes putting seven times in 2021. He did it four times in 2022, but just once in 2023. If Scheffler can even get back to four decent putting performances next year (my bar is not high), even with some ball-striking regression, we’re still looking at a multiple win season that is likely to include a major. The Masters, a tournament that historically values putting experience at Augusta over pure putting skill, remains his best opportunity.
The PGA Championship @ Valhalla
Winner: Rory McIlroy
Back-up pick: Bryson DeChambeau
I’m beginning to lose track of the amount of major championships over the last few years that have felt like the perfect opportunity for Rory McIlroy to end his decade long draught. First there was the 150th Open Championship at St. Andrew’s, where McIlroy first broke onto the scene in 2010. Still the major and venue touched with the most romanticism, McIlroy saw victory snatched from the jaws of defeat when Cameron Smith put together one of the best back nines in major championship history. Then there was the PGA Championship at Oak Hill, a course where McIlroy is an honorary member, in a town where he has strong family ties. Next, the Open Championship returned to Royal Liverpool, where McIlroy was victorious in 2014. This is not even mentioning the 2023 U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club, a golf course McIlroy does not have some emotional connection to, and yet provided the stage for his closest call yet.
Rev up the content machine on more time, as the 2024 PGA Championship returns to Valhalla Country Club in Louisville, Kentucky, the site of McIlroy’s last major championship victory, all the way back in 2014. While the course has undergone a number of changes since Rory defeated Phil Mickelson and Rickie Fowler as darkness struck on the 18th hole, the bones of the Jack Nicklaus design are still in tact. If anything, the changes, which mainly come in the form of length, should suit the 2023 version of McIlroy even more. On paper, Valhalla reminds me a lot of Oak Hill. It’s a big and brawny, Bent-grass, tree-lined, parkland golf course. For all intents and purposes, power off the tee and long iron play will be the name of the game at the PGA Championship once again, a style of golf that fits McIlroy’s game to a tee.
Wile the last two years have been mired in disappointment due to near misses at the four biggest events of the year (the only four weeks per year that Rory should be measured by), there’s a strong statistical argument that this is the best golf he’s ever played. Rory gained 2.61 strokes per round in 2022, and 2.59 strokes per round in 2023. The only other season where he came close to achieving that baseline was un-coincidentally in 2014, the year he won his aforementioned last major at Valhalla.
I have never been in the camp that Rory is broken, or that too much scar tissue has accumulated for him to ever cross the elusive major championship finish line just one more time. I find myself far closer to the side that the more a generational talent puts himself in the mix, the more that the law of averages will begin to swing back in his favor. I could bore you with all the reasons why Valhalla is a perfect golf course for McIlroy, but as earlier mentioned, this is far from the first major championship we’ve entered where Rory makes the most sense on paper.
Unfortunately for us dreamers, major championships aren’t won on paper. Cameron Smith’s back nine at St. Andrews or Wyndham Clark’s week of a lifetime at Los Angeles Country Club were far from the realm of possibility at the time of writing similar columns the previous two years. And while it almost feels increasingly more likely that something unforeseen and arbitrary will occur next summer in Louisville than the tournament will play out how it should if it was thrown into a simulator, fools like us can only dream!
