Culture
Where should Scottie Scheffler's 2024 season rank among golf's best all time?
It was dark. Nobody else was on the range. And for a moment, Scottie Scheffler led the Golf Channel-watching public to believe he was grinding with 18 holes to go at the Masters. Scheffler had just finished a late third round at Augusta National with a one-shot lead. He did his media obligations late into the night and wandered over to the area between the range and the training building.
With his coach Randy Smith and his caddie Ted Scott behind him, Scheffler pulled out a club and took some hacks under the range lights. Smith and Scott stared into the phone, its camera aimed at Scheffler’s swing.
“I don’t know what they’re doing! He’s hit one bad shot this week. He’s hit the ball beautifully! They can’t be working on anything,” Paul McGinley said in Irish exasperation as he and Brandel Chamblee watched on during Golf Channel’s “Live From” broadcast.
Here’s the thing: They weren’t working on a damn thing. “We mess with Brandel and (Paul McGinley) up there in the booth,” Smith told The Athletic.
They were killing time as Scheffler waited for a massage appointment, and Smith and Scott saw the red light go on the “Live From” set across the range and decided to have some fun. “Hey, Scottie, go pretend you’re swinging.”
“Ted pulls out his phone,” Smith recalled, “We’re looking at the phone. They think we’re looking at his swings. We’re not. We’re watching a Desi Arnaz and Lucy video!”
Because right now, Scottie Scheffler doesn’t have much to work on. He went on to win that Masters in April for his second green jacket. He won again the next week in Hilton Head for his fourth win in five starts. Two months later, he won the Travelers Championship on Sunday for his sixth win in 10 starts. He’s suddenly the first player since Arnold Palmer in 1962 to win six tournaments before July.
It was already safe to call this the best PGA Tour season in roughly a decade. Scheffler has been on the best three-year ball-striking run since peak Tiger Woods. The superlatives are well documented. But now, Scheffler is taking his run into the conversation for the best seasons of all time.
Scottie throws it in close, and Tom Kim finds the bunker on the first playoff hole. pic.twitter.com/HT0CJj5TgE
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 23, 2024
In the PGA Tour era when there was an actual, organized tour (pretty much the 1970s on), we all know how much Woods won, compiling six different seasons of six or more wins. The record for PGA Tour wins in a season is nine — Woods in 2000 and Vijay Singh in 2004. Only two other players even reached that modern six-win club, Tom Watson in 1980 and Nick Price in 1994.
So where does Scheffler’s campaign rank? And how much further can we go?
There’s context for many of the others. Singh’s 2004 is, indeed, one of the greatest seasons ever. He won nine times, including the PGA Championship, and racked up 18 top 10s. But the season had a different, longer format back then with the Tour Championship in November. Singh’s fourth win came in his 22nd start, and his ninth came in his 30th start. Scheffler likely won’t make another start after the Tour Championship in August and might make 20 starts all season. That doesn’t lessen Singh’s achievement. It’s just different.
Unless Scheffler wins a grand slam some day, nobody is catching Tiger Woods’ 2000 (3 majors, 9 wins). That’s in a tier of its own. And for the sake of comparison, we won’t bother using the incredible pre-modern era seasons like Byron Nelson’s 1945 (18 wins, including one major!) or Bobby Jones’ 1930 (all four majors).
If Scheffler doesn’t win again, this season already should go down as one of the 10 best years ever. On pure wins, it would be behind Tiger’s two or three best, Jordan Spieth’s breakout 2015 (five wins, two majors) as well as Singh, Nicklaus (1972) and Palmer (1960, 1962).
But thinking of it this way leaves out two things.
One: Golf is not a zero-sum sport. It would leave out the seven other top-10s in the nine starts that weren’t wins or he’s only finished worse than 17th once all year. It would leave out that he got slammed against a cop car and arrested hours before his Friday tee time at the PGA Championship and still tied for eighth. It would also leave out the overall shot-by-shot transcendence, with DataGolf putting Scheffler’s 2024 form as the second-best season since the dawn of shot tracking (the last 30 years). He’s gaining 3.1 strokes compared to the field. Only Woods’ 2000 peak was better.
It also leaves out the scale of Scheffler’s wins. All six wins are big boy events. He won the Masters, the Players Championship and four more signature events against all the top PGA Tour stars. These were at courses like Augusta, Sawgrass, Bay Hill and Muirfield Village, some of the best tests in the world.
Yes, it should be mentioned Scheffler is playing on a PGA Tour without Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Brooks Koepka and Cameron Smith who left for LIV, but those stars also only have a combined one win on LIV this season.
Scottie Scheffler’s son, Bennett, is six weeks old and has been a part of two trophy celebrations. (Andy Lyons / Getty Images)
Two: Scheffler’s season is not over.
So what’s next? Scheffler will likely take the next two weeks off before heading to Scotland for the Open Championship. After his win Sunday, he implied he wouldn’t be playing the Scottish Open the week before, but that is unclear. Then, he’ll go to Paris for the Olympics on Aug. 1. That wouldn’t count as a PGA Tour win, but in a loaded Olympic field with pretty much all the top players (except DeChambeau) an Olympic gold would realistically rank somewhere between a major and a big-time PGA Tour event. Then, Scheffler will have three FedEx Cup playoff events in August to wrap up the year.
That potentially leaves Scheffler just four more official tournaments, plus another significant opportunity at the Olympics. He’ll be the favorite at each.
Maybe it will take a second major at the Open Championship at Royal Troon to truly put this season up in that tier of the greatest ever. It’s fair. It would feel strange to have a player so comically ahead of the field week to week only win one major. The unfortunate truth is that’s how difficult major championships are. But if he does put himself at seven (or more wins) with two majors, it will become a sincere argument whether this is the second-greatest season ever.
If Scheffler doesn’t win the Open but gets to seven or eight wins overall, it pushes him further into that top-five tier. It will become about personal preference
This is all just fun stuff for bar room debates. It isn’t real. These are all just ways to take a step back and make sure we’re appreciating the fact we are watching greatness. Scheffler isn’t just having the best season in a decade. He’s on a three-year run of 12 wins and 36 top-5s. He is special. Enjoy it.
(Top photo: James Gilbert / Getty Images)
“Window seat with garden view / A perfect nook to read a book / I’m lost in my Jane Austen…” sings Kristin Chenoweth in “The Girl in 14G” — what could be more ideal? Well, perhaps showing off your literary knowledge and getting a perfect score on this week’s super-size Book Review Quiz Bowl honoring the life, work and global influence of Jane Austen, who turns 250 today. In the 12 questions below, tap or click your answers to the questions. And no matter how you do, scroll on to the end, where you’ll find links to free e-book versions of her novels — and more.
On Dec. 16, 1775, a girl was born in Steventon, England — the seventh of eight children — to a clergyman and his wife. She was an avid reader, never married and died in 1817, at the age of 41. But in just those few decades, Jane Austen changed the world.
Her novels have had an outsize influence in the centuries since her death. Not only are the books themselves beloved — as sharply observed portraits of British society, revolutionary narrative projects and deliciously satisfying romances — but the stories she created have so permeated culture that people around the world care deeply about Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy, even if they’ve never actually read “Pride and Prejudice.”
With her 250th birthday this year, the Austen Industrial Complex has kicked into high gear with festivals, parades, museum exhibits, concerts and all manner of merch, ranging from the classily apt to the flamboyantly absurd. The words “Jane mania” have been used; so has “exh-Aust-ion.”
How to capture this brief life, and the blazing impact that has spread across the globe in her wake? Without further ado: a mere sampling of the wealth, wonder and weirdness Austen has brought to our lives. After all, your semiquincentennial doesn’t come around every day.
By ‘A Lady’
Austen published just four novels in her lifetime: “Sense and Sensibility” (1811), “Pride and Prejudice” (1813), “Mansfield Park” (1814) and “Emma” (1815). All of them were published anonymously, with the author credited simply as “A Lady.” (If you’re in New York, you can see this first edition for yourself at the Grolier Club through Feb. 14.)
Where the Magic Happened
Placed near a window for light, this diminutive walnut table was, according to family lore, where the author did much of her writing. It is now in the possession of the Jane Austen Society.
An Iconic Accessory
Few of Austen’s personal artifacts remain, contributing to the author’s mystique. One of them is this turquoise ring, which passed to her sister-in-law and then her niece after her death. In 2012, the ring was put up for auction and bought by the “American Idol” champion Kelly Clarkson. This caused quite a stir in England; British officials were loath to let such an important cultural artifact leave the country’s borders. Jane Austen’s House, the museum now based in the writer’s Hampshire home, launched a crowdfunding campaign to Bring the Ring Home and bought the piece from Clarkson. The real ring now lives at the museum; the singer has a replica.
Austen Onscreen
Since 1940, when Austen had a bit of a moment and Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier starred in MGM’s rather liberally reinterpreted “Pride and Prejudice,” there have been more than 20 international adaptations of Austen’s work made for film and TV (to say nothing of radio). From the sublime (Emma Thompson’s Oscar-winning “Sense and Sensibility”) to the ridiculous (the wholly gratuitous 2022 remake of “Persuasion”), the high waists, flickering firelight and double weddings continue to provide an endless stream of debate fodder — and work for a queen’s regiment of British stars.
Jane Goes X-Rated
The rumors are true: XXX Austen is a thing. “Jane Austen Kama Sutra,” “Pride and Promiscuity: The Lost Sex Scenes of Jane Austen” and enough slash fic and amateur porn to fill Bath’s Assembly Rooms are just the start. Purists may never recover.
A Lady Unmasked
Austen’s final two completed novels, “Northanger Abbey” and “Persuasion,” were published after her death. Her brother Henry, who oversaw their publication, took the opportunity to give his sister the recognition he felt she deserved, revealing the true identity of the “Lady” behind “Pride and Prejudice,” “Emma,” etc. in a biographical note. “The following pages are the production of a pen which has already contributed in no small degree to the entertainment of the public,” he wrote, extolling his sister’s imagination, good humor and love of dancing. Still, “no accumulation of fame would have induced her, had she lived, to affix her name to any productions of her pen.”
Wearable Tributes
It is a truth universally acknowledged that a Jane Austen fan wants to find other Jane Austen fans, and what better way to advertise your membership in that all-inclusive club than with a bit of merch — from the subtle and classy to the gloriously obscene.
The Austen Literary Universe
On the page, there is no end to the adventures Austen and her characters have been on. There are Jane Austen mysteries, Jane Austen vampire series, Jane Austen fantasy adventures, Jane Austen Y.A. novels and, of course, Jane Austen romances, which transpose her plots to a remote Maine inn, a Greenwich Village penthouse and the Bay Area Indian American community, to name just a few. You can read about Austen-inspired zombie hunters, time-traveling hockey players, Long Island matchmakers and reality TV stars, or imagine further adventures for some of your favorite characters. (Even the obsequious Mr. Collins gets his day in the sun.)
A Botanical Homage
Created in 2017 to mark the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death, the “Jane Austen” rose is characterized by its intense orange color and light, sweet perfume. It is bushy, healthy and easy to grow.
Aunt Jane
Hoping to cement his beloved aunt’s legacy, Austen’s nephew James Edward Austen-Leigh published this biography — a rather rosy portrait based on interviews with family members — five decades after her death. The book is notable not only as the source (biased though it may be) of many of the scant facts we know about her life, but also for the watercolor portrait by James Andrews that serves as its frontispiece. Based on a sketch by Cassandra, this depiction of Jane is softer and far more winsome than the original: Whether that is due to a lack of skill on her sister’s part or overly enthusiastic artistic license on Andrews’s, this is the version of Austen most familiar to people today.
Cultural Currency
In 2017, the Bank of England released a new 10-pound note featuring Andrews’s portrait of Austen, as well as a line from “Pride and Prejudice”: “I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading!” Austen is the third woman — other than the queen — to be featured on British currency, and the only one currently in circulation.
In the Trenches
During World War I and World War II, British soldiers were given copies of Austen’s works. In his 1924 story “The Janeites,” Rudyard Kipling invoked the grotesque contrasts — and the strange comfort — to be found in escaping to Austen’s well-ordered world amid the horrors of trench warfare. As one character observes, “There’s no one to touch Jane when you’re in a tight place.”
Baby Janes
You’re never too young to learn to love Austen — or that one’s good opinion, once lost, may be lost forever.
The Austen Industrial Complex
Maybe you’ve not so much as seen a Jane Austen meme, let alone read one of her novels. No matter! Need a Jane Austen finger puppet? Lego? Magnetic poetry set? Lingerie? Nameplate necklace? Plush book pillow? License plate frame? Bath bomb? Socks? Dog sweater? Whiskey glass? Tarot deck? Of course you do! And you’re in luck: What a time to be alive.
Around the Globe
Austen’s novels have been translated into more than 40 languages, including Polish, Finnish, Chinese and Farsi. There are active chapters of the Jane Austen Society, her 21st-century fan club, throughout the world.
Playable Persuasions
In Austen’s era, no afternoon tea was complete without a rousing round of whist, a trick-taking card game played in two teams of two. But should you not be up on your Regency amusements, you can find plenty of contemporary puzzles and games with which to fill a few pleasant hours, whether you’re piecing together her most beloved characters or using your cunning and wiles to land your very own Mr. Darcy.
#SoJaneAusten
The wild power of the internet means that many Austen moments have taken on lives of their own, from Colin Firth’s sopping wet shirt and Matthew Macfadyen’s flexing hand to Mr. Collins’s ode to superlative spuds and Mr. Knightley’s dramatic floor flop. The memes are fun, yes, but they also speak to the universality of Austen’s writing: More than two centuries after her books were published, the characters and stories she created are as relatable as ever.
Bonnets Fit for a Bennett
For this summer’s Grand Regency Costumed Promenade in Bath, England — as well as the myriad picnics, balls, house parties, dinners, luncheons, teas and fetes that marked the anniversary — seamstresses, milliners, mantua makers and costume warehouses did a brisk business, attiring the faithful in authentic Regency finery. And that’s a commitment: A bespoke, historically accurate bonnet can easily run to hundreds of dollars.
Most Ardently, Jane
Austen was prolific correspondent, believed to have written thousands of letters in her lifetime, many to her sister, Cassandra. But in an act that has frustrated biographers for centuries, upon Jane’s death, Cassandra protected her sister’s privacy — and reputation? — by burning almost all of them, leaving only about 160 intact, many heavily redacted. But what survives is filled with pithy one-liners. To wit: “I do not want people to be very agreeable, as it saves me the trouble of liking them a great deal.”
Stage and Sensibility
Austen’s works have been adapted numerous times for the stage. Some plays (and musicals) hew closely to the original text, while others — such as Emily Breeze’s comedic riff on “Pride and Prejudice,” “Are the Bennet Girls OK?”, which is running at New York City’s West End Theater through Dec. 21 — use creative license to explore ideas of gender, romance and rage through a contemporary lens.
Austen 101
Austen remains a reliable fount of academic scholarship; recent conference papers have focused on the author’s enduring global reach, the work’s relationship to modern intersectionality, digital humanities and “Jane Austen on the Cheap.” And as one professor told our colleague Sarah Lyall of the Austen amateur scholarship hive, “Woe betide the academic who doesn’t take them seriously.”
W.W.J.D.
When facing problems — of etiquette, romance, domestic or professional turmoil — sometimes the only thing to do is ask: What would Jane do?
A famous poet once observed that it is difficult to get the news from poems. The weather is a different story. April showers, summer sunshine and — maybe especially — the chill of winter provide an endless supply of moods and metaphors. Poets like to practice a double meteorology, looking out at the water and up at the sky for evidence of interior conditions of feeling.
The inner and outer forecasts don’t always match up. This short poem by Louise Glück starts out cold and stays that way for most of its 11 lines.
And then it bursts into flame.
“Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” comes from Glück’s debut collection, “Firstborn,” which was published in 1968. She wrote the poems in it between the ages of 18 and 23, but they bear many of the hallmarks of her mature style, including an approach to personal matters — sex, love, illness, family life — that is at once uncompromising and elusive. She doesn’t flinch. She also doesn’t explain.
Here, for example, Glück assembles fragments of experience that imply — but also obscure — a larger narrative. It’s almost as if a short story, or even a novel, had been smashed like a glass Christmas ornament, leaving the reader to infer the sphere from the shards.
We know there was a couple with a flat tire, and that a year later at least one of them still has feelings for the other. It’s hard not to wonder if they’re still together, or where they were going with those Christmas presents.
To some extent, those questions can be addressed with the help of biographical clues. The version of “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson” that appeared in The Atlantic in 1967 was dedicated to Charles Hertz, a Columbia University graduate student who was Glück’s first husband. They divorced a few years later. Glück, who died in 2023, was never shy about putting her life into her work.
But the poem we are reading now is not just the record of a passion that has long since cooled. More than 50 years after “Firstborn,” on the occasion of receiving the Nobel Prize for literature, Glück celebrated the “intimate, seductive, often furtive or clandestine” relations between poets and their readers. Recalling her childhood discovery of William Blake and Emily Dickinson, she declared her lifelong ardor for “poems to which the listener or reader makes an essential contribution, as recipient of a confidence or an outcry, sometimes as co-conspirator.”
That’s the kind of poem she wrote.
“Confidence” can have two meanings, both of which apply to “Early December in Croton-on-Hudson.” Reading it, you are privy to a secret, something meant for your ears only. You are also in the presence of an assertive, self-possessed voice.
Where there is power, there’s also risk. To give voice to desire — to whisper or cry “I want you” — is to issue a challenge and admit vulnerability. It’s a declaration of conquest and a promise of surrender.
What happens next? That’s up to you.
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