Steve Hummer: Scottie Scheffler looks to cure his Tour Championship fade

ATLANTA — Scottie Scheffler, for all his freakish, Tiger-adjacent kind of success, knows plenty about playoff disappointment. He lives in Dallas.

“The Cowboys have had great regular seasons the last few years and left me heartbroken,” he said.

Before getting into Scheffler’s issues at the Tour Championship, it’s important to note that any comparison of his own faltering at East Lake to the Cowboys’ epic underperformance would be the vilest kind of libel. Just to be clear.

Last season, America’s Team lost in the first round to an eight-loss Green Bay wild card. It’s a numbing 4-12 since 1998 in the postseason. America’s Golfer has just experienced a couple ho-hum weeks in Atlanta, wasting the head start given him as the FedEx Cup points leader but maintaining his dignity. We’re not even close to the mocking stage yet. Maybe Sunday, if things don’t work out for him again this time.

In 2022, he came to East Lake and the FedEx Cup playoff finale No. 1 in points, 10 under on the scoreboard before play began, spotted a lead of between 2 and 10 strokes on the other 29 players. His Sunday 73 dropped him into a tie for second.

Last year, again starting the Tour Championship at 10 under, and again hiccuping on the weekend (he shot his 73 on Saturday this time), he plummeted to T-6.

Teeing off at the Tour Championship Thursday once more as the favored No. 1 seed, Scheffler is not riding a great trend line.

If Mr. 10 Under — he’s well earned the title by now — is grievously wounded by his last two years here and consumed by the need to make it right this weekend, he’s hiding it well.

“Treating it like every other event. Not focusing on starting strokes or anything like that, just going out there and trying to execute and do my best. Not really thinking too much about the results,” either Scheffler or some AI version of him said Tuesday.

As far as what he might do to reverse his Tour Championship fortunes, he decided to not give that too much deep thought: “Hopefully just make a few more birdies. More birdies than bogeys typically helps low scores.”

As Scheffler has taken over the role of world’s No. 1 golfer, stacking great seasons one upon another, he clearly has had trouble accepting the PGA Tour playoff system as any kind of validation of a player’s overall season. He even labeled the road to the Tour Championship and the staggered scoring system as “silly” at one point this year. Had he won either of the last two years, maybe that view would have been softened.

Rather than any great yearning to finally take one of these Tour Championships by the throat, Scheffler displays mostly a pragmatic resignation. Hence the quote from Tuesday, “At the end of the day, we have sponsors for our tournaments, and they’re going to want it a certain way, and if FedEx is putting up the kind of money they’re putting up at this event (winner takes $25 million), we’re going to have to play it the way they want to play it. It’s just as simple as that.”

Probably his finest season yet wraps up at East Lake this weekend. Scheffler has bagged six PGA Tour titles, including his second Masters green jacket as well as Olympic gold. He’s No. 1 on Tour in scoring average, strokes gained total, greens in regulation and official money winnings ($29 million).

And, yet, all he has to show for that is a 2-stroke starting advantage over the man paired with him Thursday, the one man here who’s season belongs in the same paragraph with Scheffler, Xander Schauffele.

Head to head, not a great matchup for Scheffler. Schauffele, a two-time major winner this season, holds the record-low career scoring average at East Lake, nearly three strokes less than Scheffler. The big course makeover may mitigate that somewhat. Still, Schauffele’s playoffs — T-2 in Memphis, T-5 at Castle Pines — have been more convincing than Scheffler’s — a 4th and a T-33 last week, his second-worst result this season).

Scheffler’s hardly so desperate to break through at the Tour Championship that he’d willingly give up his stroke advantage, just to shake up the three-year-old script.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “I want every stroke that I can get this week. I’ve experienced it on the other side, and I would much rather start a tournament with a lead than start it behind. It’s as simple as that.”

In fact, desperate is probably the last word you’d attach to any part of Scheffler’s approach here this week.

How much overall importance Scheffler places on the Tour Championship isn’t exactly evident — “At the end of the day, this is more of an entertainment product. And we have a lot of other traditional events throughout the year that we play,” he said Tuesday.

And any stress level from not having won from the lead the last two years hardly registers — “You know, this is the best opportunity that I’ll have in my career, probably, to win a golf tournament. I’m starting two strokes ahead of second place. That’s a pretty cool place to be, really.”