We haven’t seen anything like Scottie Scheffler’s 2025 dominance since Tiger Woods.
Scottie Scheffler claimed two major championships and six wins to win the PGA Tour Player of the Year award for the fourth-straight year, moving level with Tiger Woods for the most-ever in a row.
Scheffler, by winning the PGA Championship and The Open Championship this year, is now a US Open away from completing the career Grand Slam, just one year removed from Rory McIlroy achieving the same historic feat.
And what’s even more impressive? He will have won all four majors in a span of just four years if he wins at Shinnecock Hills in 2026.
When Woods’ era of dominance ended in 2008, we entered an era of parity. Players have threatened to take the torch. McIlroy won four majors in the early 2010s, and Jordan Spieth burst onto the scene to win two in quick succession. But no one has been able to sustain dominance.
In 2012, McIlroy had a theory as to why this is, and it makes Scheffler’s dominance all the more impressive.
Rory McIlroy’s comments make Scottie Scheffler’s dominance more impressive
Until Scheffler dominated 2025, we hadn’t really seen any player take a stranglehold on the major championships. It’s been an era of underdogs, with J.J. Spaun winning the US Open and Danny Willett winning the Masters. No one has looked unbeatable until Scheffler this year.
Gone are the days of only the best players in the world winning the majors, as they did in the 60s and 70s. Since Woods’ era of dominance came to a close, it’s been easier than ever for an underdog to come out of nowhere and seize the biggest prizes.
And McIlroy had a theory as to why that has been the case. He said in 2012, “I think the reason it is like this, fields are much deeper. Partly because the guys have just got better and have worked hard; they are putting more into the game physically, mentally, practice, technical, everything.
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“But I think one of the big things is the technology. I think 25 years ago you had the really good players that could play with basically anything, and nowadays, the technology lets maybe some of the lesser players catch up with the better players. And I think that’s why you see so many more guys winning these days.”
That makes Scheffler’s 2025 all the more impressive. With the field closer together than ever, no player should be able to dominate like he did. And despite this, he was clearly the class of the field, and no one looked close to his level.
It seems crazy to say, but perhaps Scheffler is actually underrated.
How far Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy hit a persimmon driver
Woods and McIlroy once tried their hand at an old persimmon driver, and proved that the very best players in the world can get real distance with old technology.
All of the old greats of the game, from Jack Nicklaus to Woods in his early years, used a wooden persimmon driver. It has far less forgiveness than a modern, metal club, but according to Woods, when you hit the ball square on the face, you can still generate distance.
Woods said in 2023, “I was at home playing at Medalist and I had my old persimmon driver and I was able to still carry the ball 290 yards. Now, when I missed it, no, it did not go very far. But the ability to hit the ball in the middle of the face was rewarded.”
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McIlroy also had a go with a wooden driver, and using a modern golf ball, hit it 255 yards. That’s around 70 yards shorter than his average driving distance on the PGA Tour that year.
That goes to show that you can really separate the greats of the game by their ability to hit the ball well, not just hard, when technology is stripped back.
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