Celts

CROMWELL, Connecticut – Scottie Scheffler is as accommodating because the PGA Tour's next elite golfer in relation to signing autographs for fans.

The Dallas-based Mavericks fan reached his limits on the Travelers Championship on Wednesday.

“A fan asked me to sign a Celtics hat today and I said no, but other than that there hasn't been much interaction,” the world's No. 1 player said with fun when asked if he'd heard much trash talk since arriving in New England, just days after the Celtics handily beat the Mavericks to win their 18th NBA title.

Scheffler groaned before the query about his premature arrival in Celtics land could possibly be fully answered.

“Do I have to answer that question?” asked Scheffler.

He said, nevertheless, that he doesn’t expect to have an excessive amount of grief over the Celtics' convincing 4-1 victory.

“Probably not from other golfers – perhaps Keegan [Bradley]but probably not, I wouldn't really expect that from him either.”

Bradley, a Vermont native who lives near Boston, fully understood Scheffler's desire to avoid the query.

“I don't blame him,” said Bradley, the defending Travelers champion. “If I were a Dallas fan, I wouldn't want that either.”

“I have so much fun watching Boston sporting events, but then I also watch them with my family and my kids – my oldest son Logan was really into it – and it was really fun to watch him watch the Celtics win,” said Bradley, who was impressed afterward by the wisdom that got here from the mouths of Jaylen Brown and Jayson Tatum.

“All of us in sports can make such a big deal out of things, and it was fun to hear them take a step back this year and kind of let the game come to them,” Bradley said.

A “no longer in Dallas” moment for Scheffler: The current heat wave impressed him just as little because the Celtics.

“As far as heat goes, I'm from Texas, so it's actually cold up here for me,” Scheffler said. “I was a little cold coming out on the track this morning.”

He won at Arnold Palmer. He won at the house of the PGA Tour. He won in Augusta and per week later in Hilton Head.

Scottie Scheffler was already one of the best golfer on this planet, but on Sunday he prolonged his lead even further with a win on the Memorial Tournament – Jack Nicklaus's premier event – for his fifth victory in eight tournaments.

On the difficult Muirfield Village course, where only five players played under par on Sunday, Scheffler fended off runs from Collin Morikawa and Adam Hadwin, shooting 74 in the ultimate round and beating Morikawa by one stroke.

With this victory, Scheffler becomes the primary golfer since Justin Thomas in 2017 to win five PGA Tour events in a single season. And we're only in June, with two majors and the FedEx Cup Playoffs left. And all five wins have come at signature events: the Masters, the Players Championship, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the RBC Heritage and now the Memorial.

Scheffler began Sunday with a four-stroke lead over Morikawa and the remaining of the sector. With the course so fast and hard, Scheffler played the primary nine holes over par while Canadian Hadwin did all the things he could to get inside one shot.

Morikawa also stayed inside one stroke for a lot of the back nine, but while much of the sector fell behind, Scheffler remained regular. Despite missing seven of his first 11 fairways on Sunday, he shot par for eight consecutive holes and never relinquished the lead.

Scheffler even made a bogey on the seventeenth hole, giving Morikawa the chance to tie on the 18th. Scheffler's approach shot then bounced hard off the green and landed within the rough, but Morikawa landed in the identical rough behind the pin.

To win, Scheffler needed to sink a 5-foot putt to make par, and with an emotional fist pump he secured the win.

Big win. Big fist pump.

pic.twitter.com/Q6jydEACll

— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 9, 2024

The close result means one other tough second-place finish for Morikawa, the two-time major winner who has had his best season since his 2021 campaign but has fallen several times. He was in the ultimate rating at each the Masters and PGA Championship this spring, but was seven and 6 strokes behind the winner in each, respectively.

He also competed within the RBC Heritage on Sunday, two meters behind Scheffler, but finished six meters behind.

Scheffler is currently a 3-1 favorite at next week's US Open in Pinehurst and is on target to change into the game's biggest favorite since Tiger Woods' heyday in 2010.

Required reading

Scottie Scheffler said he felt like his “head was still spinning” after the sequence of events he experienced Friday. He was arrested and handcuffed Friday morning when he arrived on the golf course before sunrise, was booked in downtown Louisville wearing an orange jumpsuit, then returned to Valhalla Golf Club and shot a 66 within the second round of the PGA Championship.

Scheffler is charged with second-degree assault, third-degree criminal assault, reckless driving and failure to obey traffic signals by an officer directing traffic. According to online court records, his arraignment is scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday, two days after the scheduled end of the PGA Championship.

When asked to summarize what happened, Scheffler described his routine before the examination, which took place in prison.

“I spent some time stretching in a prison cell, which was my first time,” Scheffler said after his second round.

Scheffler said his “main focus after his arrest” was whether he could proceed playing within the PGA Championship. He said he was “shocked” when he was arrested and “trembled for an hour” attempting to calm himself down.

When he was fingerprinted in jail, Scheffler said a police officer offered him a sandwich.

“Sure, I’ll have a sandwich, I haven’t had breakfast yet,” said Scheffler.

Scheffler took off at 10:08 a.m., nearly 4 hours after his arrest. He described Friday's round as “pretty good.”

“It was definitely nice to be able to put together a solid round today,” said Scheffler.

The heights they reach have turn out to be comical, two golfers taking up their respective sports with such dominance that it's hard to assume – a minimum of for this moment – that anyone could beat them.

Nelly Korda just won her fifth straight start, ending with a significant, the Chevron Championship. Scottie Scheffler has just won 4 of 5 starts with a Masters in the center. The number 1s in the boys's and girls's worlds are not any longer just the perfect players of their sport. They turn out to be the perfect of all time. It's gotten to the purpose where Scheffler was jokingly asked this week in Hilton Head if the 2 were competing.

“I don't know, man,” he joked, “I think if it's a competition, she's pretty much beaten me right now.” Five wins in a row. She had that T16 at first of the yr that was just terrible. I can’t imagine she did that.”

And with their great runs has come a fun little trend: Who can post probably the most ridiculous, impressive stats or notes to quantify how incredible their golf was in 2024?

“Best five weeks since then.”

“I’ve won the most strokes since then.”

It's gotten so extreme and entertaining that we decided to compile a listing of probably the most impressive and meaningful notes from Scheffler and Korda's historic runs.

1. In their last 10 combined starts, Korda and Scheffler have beaten 1,163 golfers, per Monday Q Info. Only one golfer hit. Stephen Jaeger avoided a playoff and beat Scheffler by one shot on the Houston Open after his putt on 18 missed. For Korda, it’s the primary time since Annika Sorsenstam (2004, 2005) that somebody has won five consecutive LPGA events. Scheffler's WW-T2 WW run is just the fifth series of 5 or more T2s within the last 30 years. Tiger Woods did it eight times in a row and on one other occasion seven times in a row. Scheffler matched Vijay Singh's 2004 run.

2. Korda and Scheffler became the second pair of world No. 1s in men's and girls's golf to win major tournaments in consecutive weeks (for the reason that inception of the Rolex Women's World Golf Ranking). According to Tiger and Lorena Ochoa, this was achieved in consecutive weeks on the Women's British Open and the 2007 PGA Championship Contributor Justin Ray.

3. In the last 42 days, Scheffler has earned $16.3 million. That's the second-most earnings in a PGA Tour season, and he's done it in only five events. That means Ted Scott, Scheffler's caddy, made about $1.78 million this yr, putting him at No. 45 on the 2024 PGA Tour money list, ahead of Rory McIlroy.

Scheffler is chasing his own record. He earned $21.04 million last season.

4. It's not only Scheffler's victories. These are his two years of historic consistency. Scheffler has finished in the highest three in 23 of his last 51 events, beating almost all the field 43 percent of the time. For reference, Xander Schauffele is the No. 2 player at DataGolf and one of the consistent players in men's skilled golf not named Scheffler. Schauffele's pre-RBC Heritage betting odds had him ending in the highest five 30 percent of the time. Scheffler ended up in the highest three almost one and a half times as quickly.

5. Scottie's lead on this planet rankings over No. 2 Rory McIlroy is larger than McIlroy's lead over No. 788 Tiger Woods. Scheffler has twice as many OWGR points as McIlroy, with 690 total points, a median of 15 points to McIlroy's 338 points, which corresponds to a median of seven.4.

The gap between world No. 1 Nelly Korda and world No. 2 Lilia Vu within the Rolex Women's Golf Rankings is similar because the gap between Vu and the 185th ranked player, Auston Kim.

6. Scheffler has twice as many rounds of 64 or lower (4) as rounds of even par (2) this season. Even par is his worst results of 2024 (Round 2 on the Houston Open and Masters). He hasn't shot over par since a 3-over 73 on the Tour Championship in August.

7. With her win on the Chevron Championship, Korda became the third LPGA player, joining Nancy Lopez (1978) and Sorenstam, to win five tournaments in five starts. After withdrawing from the LA Championship this week, Korda might be aiming for a record sixth victory on the Founders Cup (May 9-12 in Clifton, NJ).

eighth. No American golfer had won five tournaments in a single LPGA season since July Inkster in 1999. Korda had won just five tournaments in a row before May.

9. Korda leads the LPGA points race for the 2024 season with 2,702 CME Globe points. Lydia Ko is in second place and has earned lower than half of that. Korda has already collected enough points to complete third in each of the last two years.

10. The 25-year-old Korda became the youngest American player to win a second LPGA major since July Inkster (23) in 1984 (over Justin Ray). From 1984 to 2002, Inkster ultimately won seven. Meg Mallon is the one other American woman to achieve 4 majors within the twenty first century. Korda is halfway there.

The only excellent news for the remainder of the PGA and LPGA tours? Scheffler and Korda have decided to take this week off.

The athlete