Gavin Cooney
reports from Bethpage Black, New York
BUBBA WATSON LOOKED forward to the Ryder Cup because those were the weeks in which he was allowed to have Tiger Woods’ phone number, given among the players’ obligations was the submitting of themselves to a WhatsApp group. Come the end of the week, Woods would block Watson’s number for another couple of years.
And we wonder why Tiger Woods and the Ryder Cup never really gelled.
Woods’ record was bad and bizarrely so. He only ever won one of his eight Ryder Cup appearances, winning 13 matches but losing 21 and halving another three. From 1999 to 2010, Woods won 34% of his PGA Tour events, while winning 35% of his career Ryder Cup matches.
This is nigh unfathomable until you consider anecdotes like Watson’s. Treating a team-mate with that level of reverence-cum-fear ceases to make them a team-mate in the true sense of the word. The Ryder Cup was also a reproach to Woods’ mania for competition: Woods was so focused on beating everyone that he couldn’t suspend that wariness to others, even for a week.
“Tiger is an intimidator even if he doesn’t mean to be”, Paul Azinger told Sports Illustrated in 2018. “Tiger used to be uncomfortable with those who were comfortable with him. I would have wanted him paired with guys who he felt would not have been a threat to him.”
Tiger Woods at the 2018 Ryder Cup, where he went 0-4. Alamy Stock Photo
Alamy Stock Photo
Woods’ Ryder Cup playing days are now behind him, though this year the Americans have his heir as the absurdly dominant solo player suddenly expected to play along with the competition.
Scottie Scheffler’s 2025 has been astonishing, winning six of his last 12 events — two of them majors — including the Procore Championship, a low-key PGA Tour event the Americans used as a tune-up for this week in Bethpage. He hasn’t finished outside the top 25 in any event all year, and hasn’t been worse than top-10 since the Players Championship in March.
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And like Woods, Scheffler’s Ryder Cup record is ho-hum. He was the lowest-ranked of their star-studded team in Whistling Straits in 2021, winning two matches and halving another, but in Rome he became the first world number one not to win a Ryder Cup point, infamously left in tears after he and Brooks Koepka were smithereened 9&7 by Viktor Hovland and the rookie Ludvig Åberg.
So, have the Americans stumbled into the same problem again? Another generational competitor who is oddly uncomfortable on Ryder Cup weeks?
“I’d like to think that I’m not difficult to pair with people”, said Scheffler in the press room today. “I’d like to think of myself as someone that’s a nice guy and easy to get along with.”
“I think some of the difficulty you had with playing with Tiger. . . I don’t even know what it could be. It could just be the aura that was Tiger Woods.”
Which begs the question: does Scheffler not believe he has an aura?
“Not really”, he replied with a slightly awkward laugh.
Justin Thomas was asked an hour later the same question. Does Scottie Scheffler have an aura?
“I don’t know”, said Thomas. “He doesn’t to me, but I also feel like I know him well enough that, even if he did, I wouldn’t give him that credit and let that get to his head because he’s competitive and can get chirpy enough, that that’s the last thing I need him knowing that if I did feel that way. I’m sure he does to some people, and rightfully so, right?”
Scheffler has no interest in what Bryson DeChambeau’s many YouTube fans would describe as aura farming, as he lacks Woods’ on-course magnetism.
He has nothing of Woods’ flourishes and histrionics. He rarely pumps his fist; he never twirls his club; he doesn’t wear the steely glare. His swing is bespoke and remarkably effective but it has nothing of the back-juddering explosion of Woods’.
In the press conference room, though, he is much more engaging than Woods, who generally felt it best to say nothing and then to keep on saying it. It was at the Open Championship at Portrush in July that Scheffler delivered his long disquisition on the difference between happiness and fulfilment, of how golf consumes him and drives him but ultimately will never truly make him happy. It remains the most interesting press conference answer this writer has ever heard.
“What I was trying to say at The Open Championship is that immediately after a tournament ends there’s this euphoric feeling of actually winning the golf tournament, but it just doesn’t really last that long”, said Scheffler at Bethpage earlier today. “I have a deep sense of satisfaction and pride in what I’ve been able to accomplish in this game.”
He later returned to the subject of satisfaction.
“Satisfied is also a very dangerous word to use when you’re talking about your career and the game of golf. I would say even after tournaments that I win, I think satisfaction is something that doesn’t really creep into my mind.
“I’m a perfectionist at heart, and I think that’s what’s so great about the game of golf. That’s what I love about it: there’s literally always something you can improve on, and that’s what I focus on, day in day out.”
This sheer commitment, combined with the perspective on life he articulated at Portrush, is of course utterly daunting for any of his competitors, and that creates an aura of its own, even if Scheffler is far too lacking in self-absorption to acknowledge it.
As to whether his is an aura as unsuited to the Ryder Cup as Woods’ remains to be seen. The Americans certainly can’t afford that quirk of history to repeat itself.
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Americans uneasy that Scheffler may be as unsuited to the Ryder Cup as Tiger Woods
BUBBA WATSON LOOKED forward to the Ryder Cup because those were the weeks in which he was allowed to have Tiger Woods’ phone number, given among the players’ obligations was the submitting of themselves to a WhatsApp group. Come the end of the week, Woods would block Watson’s number for another couple of years.
And we wonder why Tiger Woods and the Ryder Cup never really gelled.
Woods’ record was bad and bizarrely so. He only ever won one of his eight Ryder Cup appearances, winning 13 matches but losing 21 and halving another three. From 1999 to 2010, Woods won 34% of his PGA Tour events, while winning 35% of his career Ryder Cup matches.
This is nigh unfathomable until you consider anecdotes like Watson’s. Treating a team-mate with that level of reverence-cum-fear ceases to make them a team-mate in the true sense of the word. The Ryder Cup was also a reproach to Woods’ mania for competition: Woods was so focused on beating everyone that he couldn’t suspend that wariness to others, even for a week.
“Tiger is an intimidator even if he doesn’t mean to be”, Paul Azinger told Sports Illustrated in 2018. “Tiger used to be uncomfortable with those who were comfortable with him. I would have wanted him paired with guys who he felt would not have been a threat to him.”
Woods’ Ryder Cup playing days are now behind him, though this year the Americans have his heir as the absurdly dominant solo player suddenly expected to play along with the competition.
Scottie Scheffler’s 2025 has been astonishing, winning six of his last 12 events — two of them majors — including the Procore Championship, a low-key PGA Tour event the Americans used as a tune-up for this week in Bethpage. He hasn’t finished outside the top 25 in any event all year, and hasn’t been worse than top-10 since the Players Championship in March.
And like Woods, Scheffler’s Ryder Cup record is ho-hum. He was the lowest-ranked of their star-studded team in Whistling Straits in 2021, winning two matches and halving another, but in Rome he became the first world number one not to win a Ryder Cup point, infamously left in tears after he and Brooks Koepka were smithereened 9&7 by Viktor Hovland and the rookie Ludvig Åberg.
So, have the Americans stumbled into the same problem again? Another generational competitor who is oddly uncomfortable on Ryder Cup weeks?
“I’d like to think that I’m not difficult to pair with people”, said Scheffler in the press room today. “I’d like to think of myself as someone that’s a nice guy and easy to get along with.”
“I think some of the difficulty you had with playing with Tiger. . . I don’t even know what it could be. It could just be the aura that was Tiger Woods.”
Which begs the question: does Scheffler not believe he has an aura?
“Not really”, he replied with a slightly awkward laugh.
Justin Thomas was asked an hour later the same question. Does Scottie Scheffler have an aura?
“I don’t know”, said Thomas. “He doesn’t to me, but I also feel like I know him well enough that, even if he did, I wouldn’t give him that credit and let that get to his head because he’s competitive and can get chirpy enough, that that’s the last thing I need him knowing that if I did feel that way. I’m sure he does to some people, and rightfully so, right?”
Scheffler has no interest in what Bryson DeChambeau’s many YouTube fans would describe as aura farming, as he lacks Woods’ on-course magnetism.
He has nothing of Woods’ flourishes and histrionics. He rarely pumps his fist; he never twirls his club; he doesn’t wear the steely glare. His swing is bespoke and remarkably effective but it has nothing of the back-juddering explosion of Woods’.
In the press conference room, though, he is much more engaging than Woods, who generally felt it best to say nothing and then to keep on saying it. It was at the Open Championship at Portrush in July that Scheffler delivered his long disquisition on the difference between happiness and fulfilment, of how golf consumes him and drives him but ultimately will never truly make him happy. It remains the most interesting press conference answer this writer has ever heard.
“What I was trying to say at The Open Championship is that immediately after a tournament ends there’s this euphoric feeling of actually winning the golf tournament, but it just doesn’t really last that long”, said Scheffler at Bethpage earlier today. “I have a deep sense of satisfaction and pride in what I’ve been able to accomplish in this game.”
He later returned to the subject of satisfaction.
“Satisfied is also a very dangerous word to use when you’re talking about your career and the game of golf. I would say even after tournaments that I win, I think satisfaction is something that doesn’t really creep into my mind.
“I’m a perfectionist at heart, and I think that’s what’s so great about the game of golf. That’s what I love about it: there’s literally always something you can improve on, and that’s what I focus on, day in day out.”
This sheer commitment, combined with the perspective on life he articulated at Portrush, is of course utterly daunting for any of his competitors, and that creates an aura of its own, even if Scheffler is far too lacking in self-absorption to acknowledge it.
As to whether his is an aura as unsuited to the Ryder Cup as Woods’ remains to be seen. The Americans certainly can’t afford that quirk of history to repeat itself.
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aura farming Golf Ryder Cup Scottie Scheffler Tiger Woods