Scottie Scheffler found himself in an unfamiliar position last weekend.
He had no work to do.
The World No. 1 missed the cut at the Genesis Scottish Open last Friday, marking the first time he failed to advance to the third round of a PGA Tour tournament in nearly four years.
He doesn’t intend to have two weekends off in a row.
Scheffler, 30, enters The Open Championship at Royal Birkdale Golf Club in Southport, England, this week as the defending champion. Last July, he finished at 17-under at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland, defeating fellow American Harris English by four shots to take home the Claret Jug.
With a victory, he would become the first player to win The Open in two consecutive seasons since Padraig Harrington of Ireland did it nearly 20 years ago. Harrington won at Carnoustie in 2007, beating Sergio Garcia in a playoff, and topped Ian Poulter by four strokes the following year at Royal Birkdale.
Scheffler took extra time to make an early arrival at Royal Birkdale and get a look at the course, which has undergone renovation since it last hosted The Open in 2017.
“I played 18 on Sunday. Played nine holes yesterday and today, so getting used to the golf course,” he said Tuesday in his pre-tournament news conference.
“Yeah, you never want to have a weekend off, but going into a tournament when you’re defending, there’s always a bit more stuff to do. So it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, albeit it was quite frustrating.”
But the extra time allowed him to see just what course designers had done to the place.
“First impressions were really good. I think it’s pretty obvious — the one thing I found interesting is it’s so obvious as to which holes had been redone. They look like they’re not even on the same golf course,” he said. “You look at 14, 15, 16, those green complexes and the amount of slope that they have off of them are pretty severe and quite challenging. The fifth hole is kind of like that, seventh hole as well.”
“Overall, I think it’s really solid. The fairways are tight, and there’s some thinking you have to do off the tee. You’ve got to be hitting the ball, I think, really sharply around this place if you’re going to make some birdies. There’s some very, very challenging holes, especially the par-3s.”
He said his preview of the course showed him he will have a lot of decisions to make if he is to tame Royal Birkdale.
“The ball’s just going to run for forever pretty much,” Scheffler said. “The fairways this week — here’s how I would say it. The fairways this week are really tight, so you get a lot of cross-winds. They can be difficult to hold just because they’re so fast and they’re so firm. So there’s a lot of thinking off the tee on whether or not you want to just hit driver up there somewhere and kind of play from the rough most likely, or do you want to start hitting some irons, getting it in some fairways and hitting some longer shots into the greens?
“On each hole there’s a good bit of strategy; there’s a decent amount of thinking. If it wasn’t as firm as it is now, there wouldn’t be as much decision-making, but I think with the firmness, it creates a whole lot more challenges, I think, for us as players, just to try and control your ball and figure out where it’s going to end up.”
