18 Parting Thoughts: We Have Entered The Scottie Scheffler Era, Tiger's Future Looks Bleak And Ludvig Is Here To Stay
Andrew Redington. Getty Images.AUGUSTA — It's been five years since true back-nine drama at the Masters, but this one made up for it with an electric first 3.5 days. There is so, so much to discuss. Here are 18 thoughts from the grounds of Augusta National.
1. Five years ago, the thinning out of Masters contenders happened at the heart of Amen Corner: the par-3 12th. Five guys in contention hit it in the water. In 2024 it happened one hole earlier, at 11. It’s a tricky hole in any wind, but that second shot with a back-left pin and the wind whipping off the left makes it downright frightening. Both Ludvig Aberg and Collin Morikawa backed off their second shots, some uncertainty clearly slipping in. Then both hit high-loopy draws that the wind took full control of. They never had a chance. And so a four-horse race—at 4:22 local time there was a four-way tie for the lead between Aberg, Morikawa, Scheffler and Homa—became mostly a two-horse one. Both made double bogeys to fall three back.
Then 12 came in for the final punch. Max Homa wasn’t trying to go for the typical Sunday sucker pin on the right. He tried to do what Tiger does, play safely over the bunker and to the middle of the green. Whether a burst of adrenaline or the old anti-right-shut-the-clubface move caused it, his ball flew a good seven yards too far and got an unfortunate kick into a bush. A double bogey from there took the wind out of his sails.
Scheffler would’ve seen all that play out in front of him. Then he did what Tiger did in ’19: he carried the bunker by just a few yards, two putter for par and took control of the tournament. He kept his foot on the gas—on the very next hole, 13, his drive trickled into the second cut and he had 240-plus with the ball well above his feet. Up ahead, Aberg had just birdied 14 to get himself back in it. Scheffler could so easily have laid up. Instead he laced a 4-iron to the right side of the green, two putted for birdie, then nearly holed yet another wedge on 14 to give himself some breathing room. He is the finest player on the planet. It’s not close. His last four starts he's gone WIN/WIN/T2/WIN. There’s not much more to say at this point.
2. We knew Ludvig Aberg had all the physical tools. But how calm was this guy throughout the entirety of Masters Sunday?! Keep in mind this wasn’t just his first Masters—it was his first major championship start ever. After he stepped off the 9th with a tie for the lead he couldn’t have looked less bothered, munching on a snack and then dropping said snack and shrugging it off. He high-fived fans that lined the walkway. Even after he hit it in the water on 11 he was able to have a laugh about it with his caddie Joe Skovron. He got right back on the horse after that double and played beautifully for the rest. Those Scandinavian players don’t get too high or too low. And when you pair that with a beautifully simple yet powerful golf swing, you’ve got a lot of wins in your future. The European Ryder Cup pipeline has a true blue-chipper in their ranks, and this likely won’t be the last time Scottie and Ludvig go toe-to-toe.
3. Max Homa’s quite the deep thinker. He’s a far cry from the see-ball, hit-ball mentality that Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson employed so successfully. He’s a big fan of journaling—he writes down affirmations before he plays in the morning. Reminds himself that he’s good enough just how he is. What’s he’s grateful for, so when he hits a bad shot he’s got a memory to contrast it against. But it’s something he said, not wrote, that’ll stick with me for a while.
"If I catch myself thinking about what could go wrong,” he said Saturday, before the biggest round of his life.” I let myself dream of what could go right."
Those are words to live by, man. We all spend so much mental energy grinding over the worst-possible scenario. It’s only fair to yourself to consider the other side. Negativity in life doesn’t get you very far. That was on my mind when Tiger Woods, after shooting 82-77 on the weekend, spoke not of the pain he’s in or the terrible golf he just played. He allowed himself to dream of what could go right in the majors ahead.
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“I’m going to do my homework going forward at Pinehurst, Valhalla and Troon, but that's kind of the game plan,” Tiger said, referring to the next three major championship sites. “It's always nice coming back here because I know the golf course, I know how to play it. I can kind of simulate shots. Granted, it's never quite the same as getting out here and doing it. Same thing, I heard there's some changes at the next couple sites. So got to get up there early and check them out.”
Is he going to win those? Probably not. But what use is there in only thinking about what can go wrong?
4. Absolutely loved the way the course played this week. We began hearing murmurs early in the week that this Masters would look different than others of recent vintage. Justin Thomas was raving about how firm it was…on Monday. Xander Schauffele said on Tuesday he’d seen shots bounce higher in his practice round than ever before. A relatively dry winter and early spring had Augusta National in a perfect spot. The only potential buzzkill: a “front” of rain open Thursday morning that could’ve softened the course considerably. Rain did come through but not as much as was expected, and the first three rounds did indeed produce the firmest Augusta National we’ve seen in some time.
“I don't know if I've seen it like this,” is how 2011 champion Charl Schwartzel. “We had a few years where it's blown, but this is as difficult as I've ever played it.”
The first three rounds did a perfect job identifying who was in control of their ball and who wasn’t. A bunch of very, very good players missed the weekend. And then Sunday allowed for the back-nine fireworks we’ve become so accustomed to seeing. Tom Kim shot 66, a round only possible because the greens were softened.
“They watered a lot of the greens. They were softer and they were easier pins to get to, less wind. You just felt like you could make a lot of birdies today, and I just feel like somebody is going to make a move”
I loved seeing it in the final round. We’ve already got a major that kicks guys in the teeth for four consecutive rounds. This one did it for three, then let the guys show off during winning time. That’s a great rhythm for a golf tournament.
5. Time heals all remains the truest of truisms. Case in point: Bryson DeChambeau. Four years ago he was the center of attention at every single tournament he entered. He’d stuck his foot in his mouth so many times—the par 67 comment, the childish “this driver sucks” incident at the British, the 27 protein shakes a day—that, at one point, he embarked on a silence strike. For a good four or five months he refused to talk to the media because it just kept going so horribly wrong. The relationship was somewhere between ice cold and frigid.
Fast forward three years and he’s the darling of the press room. He’s matured considerably. Now 30, he displays a self-awareness he lacked in his beefier days. He knows he’s different, he’s okay with that, and he’s found solace in an online community that gives him serious positive energy. He really, really loves making YouTube content. It’s not for everyone but a huge part of life is finding out what works for you.
“I’m just trying to promote the game of golf in the best way I possibly can, YouTube being one of them,” DeChambeau said Thursday. “Whether it's Instagram, X, or even Snapchat. I mean, it's crazy, I've gotten a crazy amount of love on Snapchat. Getting over like a million views a day on Snapchat and these people coming out of nowhere and Patrons saying, I love your Snapchat. Like really? They are loving it that much? That's awesome.”
I genuinely believe he’s harmless—just a slightly socially awkward kid who’s more Get Z than Millennial. He finally has a community he feels accepted in. It wasn’t the PGA Tour community, and that’s fine.
6. I’m not saying caddies don’t matter. They absolutely do…but not really from an x’s and o’s perspective. It’s all about making the player comfortable. They’re going to be out there for 5 hours. There’s a lot of dead time. You have to like the person walking right next to you.
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But beyond that, the yardage books do 90 percent of the work. Case in point: Tommy Fleetwood’s longtime caddie, Ian Finnis, missed this week’s tournament with an illness that’s been lingering since the beginning of the year. Fleetwood could’ve called a number of tour caddies to fill in but opted instead for Gray Moore, a local caddie who works at Augusta National. And what did Fleetwood do? He posted his best-ever Masters finish this week with a T3. So, how did Gray do on the bag?
“Awesome. I've known Gray since the first time I came here, and I asked him to do it when I knew like I needed a caddie, and I thought he'd be perfect. Just like a wonderful human being. I've loved every second out here with him.”
There are countless examples of a player having an awesome week with a different caddie on the bag. Or even a novice—Akshay Bhatia won a Korn Ferry event with his now-fiancee on the bag and she didn’t know a thing about golf. The player hits the golf shots. The caddie’s there for vibes. Moore will take home roughly $75,000 for his efforts.
7. Bryson struggled mightily with his speed on the greens as they grew crispier and crispier on Saturday afternoon. The reason why is rather interesting.
Augusta National might be the only golf course in the world that has never been measured by laser technology. Green-reading books have been banned on the PGA Tour since 2022 but players are still allowed to bring a slope-measuring device on during practice days, so long as they don’t actually write down the readings. (Seems a bit silly, I know). And in the approved yardage books themselves are still a bunch of arrows and heat maps that show how the green breaks, just without the numbers showing percent slope in them.
But not this week at Augusta, and that disrupted Bryson’s process. He famously likes to turn golf into as much of a science as possible. That extends to his putting: he likes to use a clock-like calibration system. He’ll get to the course early in the week, get a feel for what speed they’re rolling at (say, 11 on the stump meter) and then use a ruler to determine how far back he needs to hit the putt for a certain length of putt. But that becomes exponentially harder if you don’t have the luxury of measuring the slopes early in the week. To his credit, he took full accountability for it.
“I’m going to look back on this one and try to figure out how to putt well, putt better on these greens and control the speed a little bit more,” DeChambeau said after a Saturday 75. “I haven't been able to use the foresight on the putting green, which is another variable that gets thrown in, which is totally fine. I've got to be able to conquer it. Nobody else is doing it, and they're able to putt just fine. I've got to learn. Just like the greens books. We're not able to use greens books out here, I've had to learn and adjust to that. This is just another step. I've got to figure out, when the greens get this firm, this crisp, how to control the speed just a little bit better.”
8. The Ryder Cup captaincy giveth (Steve Stricker) and the Ryder Cup captaincy taketh (Zach Johnson). ZJ’s stock has fallen quite precipitously in the six months since Rome. First, his team got stomped. Which, that happens—but he didn’t portray much confidence of leadership at the podium all week and he presided over a team that didn’t play in the lead-up to the tournament. Then Netflix’s “Full Swing” came out and didn’t do him any favors in how it portrayed his captains pick’s process. He was eating dinner with Justin Thomas and Jordan Spieth and Rickie Fowler and even shared a house with them on the road while he was supposed to be making impartial picks. Keegan Bradley, it seemed, never had a chance because he wasn’t one of Zach’s boys. Then he got into it with a fan at the WM Phoenix Open.
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Then, this week, cameras caught him yelling “OH FUCK OFF” in the patrons’ direction after making a triple-bogey 6 on the 12th. After the round he vehemently denied that he was cussing at the patrons despite very, very convincing evidence to the contrary.
And here was his denial.
What would’ve been so hard about “yeah, I was frustrated in that moment, I think we’ve all been there, I apologize.” The Ryder Cup captaincy is a reward for a life well lived in golf, but a bad captaincy can totally flip the public’s perception of you. And once you’re on the bad side, it’s very hard to get back on the good.
9. What a freakin’ week for Neal Shipley! The Ohio State grad student is a good but not great college player—he’s ranked No. 53 among college seniors in the latest PGA Tour University ranking. But he got to the final of last year’s U.S. Amateur at Cherry Hills, and even those he lost to Nick Dunlap he still got exemptions into both the Masters and the U.S. Open.
Golf.com did a nice piece with him starting the week at Waffle House, of all places. Shipley conveyed in that video that he’s not a surefire PGA Tour pro like some of the other amateurs who’ve played the Masters—think: Viktor Hovland, Joaquin Niemann, Hideki Matsuyama. He knows this could be his one and only time. What a time it was. He was the lone amateur to make the cut, guaranteeing himself a place in Butler Cabin during the green-jacket ceremony. And then, thanks do a double bogey on 18 on Saturday, he got the dream Sunday pairing: Tiger Woods. Then he went out and beat Tiger by five shots. A diminished Tiger, for sure, but still.
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“You know, today being out there with Tiger, we were chatting. We talked a lot about just golf, Charlie and just normal things. He's such a normal guy and really cool. He was great to me all day. Couldn't be more appreciative of him just being awesome today, and it was just really cool to be around him and just the attention he gets and the roars. The crowds were phenomenal.”
That double bogey he made on on 18 on Saturday—that’s the best double he’s ever made in his life.
10. Must be nice to be 22, hugely talented and wholly fearless. Akshay Bhatia hit two of the most absurd flop shots I’ve ever seen at Augusta national. Absurd in the sense of, 90% of the field doesn’t even try them.
The first came on the 15th hole on Sunday evening with the stands mostly empty. It’s a shame they were. From halfway down the slope over the green, the vast majority of guys play something low that bounces into the hill and trickles onto the green. It’s just such a scary shot to throw up in the air with the green running away from you. Catch it a little think and it could well trickle into the water. Catch it fat and you’ve got the same shot again.
Akshay missed the memo, for he pulled the 60 degree and swung for the fences. If the mark of a good short game player is the ability to swing fast and have the ball come out slow, this was a Mona Lisa. It landed just short of the green and still trickled out to about four feet past the hole. He brushed in the birdie for an all-world up-and-down.
And he was back at it Friday morning. He missed long of the first green, a popular spot given how firm the surface was and it playing downwind. Again, most guys just bump and run from there. Not Akshay. You know what’s coming.
Just incredible touch. Bhatia’s had quite the whirlwind last two months; this week marked his seventh straight week playing. He wasn’t into the tournament until winning that thrilling battle with Denny McCarthy last week in San Antonio, which saw him become the first Drive, Chip and Putt competitor to qualify for the Masters. A T35 finish, given all that context, is very respectable.
11. For as traditional and close-minded as Augusta has been in the past they have leaned all the way in on the digital content game. They were mega active on TikTok all week, even flying a drone up Magnolia Lane and up through the clubhouse. They had podcasts recapping the action each and every day. But most surprising was hearing these words come out of chairman Fred Ridley’s mouth:
“I think part of it is just what's happening in the world of media and the fact that people are consuming content in different ways, that's happening in all sports, mobile phones, apps, social media channels, etcetera.”
Ridley! Content! We got even more YouTube and Tik-Tokey on Thursday afternoon during Bryson DeChambeau’s post-round presser.
“You look at what MrBeast has done, and there's a few other super famous people right now, Jynxzi and Sketch, and they are growing their avenues and their aspects, and it's cool to see the cross-platforming capabilities. Like these individuals coming and playing golf and seeing how much influence they have is really cool. It's just another avenue.”
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We’re in a new era of media. Adapt or die.
12. I found myself running this thought experiment this week: How would Tiger Woods finish in a Korn Ferry event? It’s beyond comprehension that he continues to make the cut at Augusta given the state he’s arrived to the tournament in. In 2022 he was 14 months removed from an SUV crushing his right leg. This year he’d played exactly one round in competition before driving up Magnolia Lane. And yet he posted a lower 36-hole score than all four reigning major champions. He made the cut when Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Dustin Johnson and Viktor Hovland missed it.
“Just look at what Tiger is doing right now. The guy has barely played at all in the last calendar year, and he's 1-over. That's alien stuff. That's unbelievable.”
Golf at Augusta almost feels like a different sport from tournament golf anywhere else. Do we think Tiger’s making the cut at a Korn Ferry event where you have to shoot -6 to make it? Or is there just something magical about this place and the questions it asks, the short-game shots it requires, the patience it rewards? Do we think Jose Maria Olazabal could ever make the cut in a Korn Ferry event? It’s wild to think that, for the old guys, playing in a major against the best fields gives them a better chance than playing some random midwest course against a bunch of guys trying to get to the PGA Tour. But I’m pretty sure it’s true.
13. Speaking of Hagestad. He’s a great authority on the difference between elite-level amateur golf and the professional level. He’s played on the last four U.S. Walker Cup teams and won his third mid-amateur championship last year at Sleepy Hollow. He shot 74-78 to miss the cut by two this week. I walked up to him afterwards with a question: how do you think your two rounds would’ve stood up in a U.S. Amateur, where there are 312 players and 64 make match play.
“Good question,” he said before ruminating. “I think I’d have missed match play by one.”
14. If the definition is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting a different result, then where do stand on Tiger Woods in the year 2024? Every time he’s come back from an injury in the past he has progressed, and done so rather quickly. We’re two full years into this latest effort and it’s the same story every time he tees it up: his playing partners in practice rounds are hugely impressed, he says he believes he can win, he shows some impressive speed and feel around the greens…and then, at some point during the week, his body locks up. It’s hard enough to beat Scottie and Rahm and everyone else with a fully healthy body that’s playing every week. I just don’t understand how Tiger can genuinely believe he can do it when his best finish in the last three years is a T45 at the Genesis.
He’s said countless times that he doesn’t see himself as a ceremonial golfer and doesn’t want to play that role. Is…is he already there? It’s one thing to piece together two good rounds and make the cut; it’s another to have the physical stamina and dependability to make a weekend push. His future outlook, from a winning-tournaments perspective, has never been more bleak.
15. That said, immense respect for him for speaking to media after an embarrassing 10-over 82 on Saturday. He could so easily have ducked out. Fused back, fused ankle and all. Jordan Spieth made an Irish exit after missing the cut on Saturday. But Tiger trudged up to the podium, sweating bullets and clearly in pain, and answered a few questions honestly and politely. A pro’s pro.
16. Tyrrell Hatton is one tough man to please. He shot three-under 69 on Sunday at the Masters and never stopped complaining about the golf course the entire time. It’s kind of endearing, how much of a curmudgeon he is. He said on the podcast that he’d find something to complain about at a course that he designed. That’s just how he operates. But there’s probably never been a person more upset with a top 10 finish at the Masters.
“I was trying not to think of 15 until I got there,” he said. “That hole lives rent-free in my head. I hate it. I absolutely hate it. And I think it hates me with the scores that I end up producing on it. Again, I've played that hole in 4-over this week. Yeah, 15 and 18, I'm 8-over for the tournament. You take them out, and it shows that I've played some really good golf. Can't do anything about it now…I'm not going to change my golf swing or how I want to play golf just to try and get around one golf course. Around most courses, it's fine. It's just here, they just love having trees on the front left of tee boxes. It would be nice if we come back and they just put a few on the right just to take out some of the people that draw it, mess them up for a change.”
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I love it. We need more characters in our game, not less.
17. I can't figure out why CBS wouldn't use the shot tracker technology on the most important shots in the tournament. They didn't have one on Scheffler's second into 11, just after both Aberg and Morikawa dumped it in the water. They also didn't have it on Homa's tee shot on 12, which ended his chances. When they don't show the tracer you're basically just left guessing as to where the ball will go. More tracers is always the answer.
18. I'll admit it: I liked Jason Day's pants.
Until next major,
Dan
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