Special to Sports News Highlights

(SNH) — On the 18th green at famed Augusta National Golf Club, 27-year-old Dallas native Scottie Scheffler was in a very familiar place.

For the second time in the last three years Scheffler was getting the most famous green sport coat slipped onto him with the help of 2023 Masters champion, Jon Rahm.

Scheffler has won two of the last three Masters championships and according to tradition the previous year’s winner puts the green jacket on the new champion.

Sweet victory for Scheffler

He entered last week’s Masters as the overwhelming favorite and he delivered with a 4-shot victory to claim his second green jacket.

The milestones continue to pile up for the World’s No. 1 player.

Scheffler is the new benchmark that the rest of the PGA Tour measures itself. Scheffler has won three times this year. He is now the first golfer since Tiger Woods to win The Players Championship and the Masters in the same season and the first since Woods to win them both multiple times.

The Scheffler-Woods comparisons are growing with each and every tournament Scheffler wins. Scheffler isn’t as dominant in victory as Woods was, but he’s winning the big tournaments. And in terms of winning, he’s become the most dominant player in pro golf since Woods.

Scheffler’s wife, Meredith, is pregnant with the couple’s first child. Meredith watched her husband win his second green jacket last Sunday from their Dallas home. She’s home again this week, while Scottie is in Hilton Head, SC, for this week’s RBC Heritage Classic. Scheffler won three of his last four starts and nine times since the beginning of 2022, absolute dominance on the PGA Tour.

Scheffler had said that even while leading at Augusta, if Meredith calls while he’s playing, he’s on the first private jet to be there for the birth. He said if it had happened, he would’ve left.

Scheffler has his priorities in order, no question about it. His golf game is in order as well. Better than anyone else on the PGA Tour.

The World No. 1

Scheffler has spent the last 47 weeks atop the Official World Golf Ranking, and it doesn’t appear he’s going to fall from the top spot anytime soon.

With his win at The Masters, Scheffler stretched his lead to a point that is likely insurmountable in 2024and it’s only mid-April. It’s unreal how dominant he currently is. And there’s more.

His gap over No. 2 is bigger than any World No.1 has had since, you guessed it, Tiger Woods in 2009 when Woods held an eight-point lead. Scheffler’s lead at this point of the season is six points over No. 2, Rory McIlroy.

With all of the very deserving and well-earned accolades for Scheffler, it makes one wonder: When was the last time Scheffler had a bad performance? The last time he lost strokes to the field was at the 2022 FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis. That’s a streak of 36 events, which spans over 600 days.

To add to his dominance, Scheffler has carded out with zero over-par rounds this season. His second-round 72 last Friday at The Masters was his worst score of the season, further adding to his dominance.

Rory and LIV Golf

This past week there have been reports flying all around the world of pro golf that McIlroy has been offered a massive amount of money by LIV Golf.

We all know the saying: Be careful what you read on the internet. Or it’s on the internet, so it must be true.

I don’t claim to know what McIlroy will do. Only McIlroy and LIV know the answer to that. But if the $850 million offer is true, how does McIlroy say no?

The PGA and LIV are on track to become one entity after last summer’s shocking word from PGA Tour Commissioner Jay Monahan that the two tours will eventually become one. In fact, there were meetings this week between the two sides and it appears the wheels may be starting to move to get us closer to a merger.

McIlroy was the mouthpiece from the players’ standpoint since several former PGA Tour players left for the millions of LIV Golf. His game has suffered since all this started. He was under immense pressure and he stood up for the PGA Tour, then took a sword to the heart once the merger was announced.

As an outside observer and a huge golf fan, I wouldn’t blame or be shocked one bit if McIlroy takes the LIV money.

As a huge fan of golf, I want to see the best players on the planet playing against each other. I’d be all in if the two tours merged and then played a Ryder Cup style playoff and, like in baseball, have two leagues, the American and the European Leagues. Then seed the players after the regular season and hold the playoff in brackets at one site to determine which player and league is the best on the planet.  

Time and a massive amount of money in pro golf now will tell.

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