ROME — Scottie Scheffler lingered next to the 18th green for a long while on Ryder Cup Sunday.
He slowly reached into his pocket, checking each tee and ball mark, until there was none left to throw into the right pond. Viewers have long been left with the conclusion of his match, a thrilling one against Europe’s Jon Rahm, but for now, Scheffler seems unwilling to do the same.
If you’re looking for clues as to why the United States blundered into another Ryder Cup defeat in Europe, look no further than this scene from the 18th minute. From the lawn, Rahm raised his hand. fist in the air triumphantly before disappearing in a golf cart on the way to the course. On the other hand, Scheffler sat for a long time, quietly chatting before disappearing into the US team’s room. Such was the depth of emotion surrounding the draw, the second of the week between Scheffler and Rahm – both of which left Scheffler feeling like losers, even though the scoreboard said otherwise.
The first blow came on Friday night, when Rahm hit a 40-footer on the 18th for the Eagles to snatch half of the Europeans like a robber – changing the score at the end of the first day from the European lead. European cities lost heavily. The final match came on Sunday morning, when Scheffler and Rahm found themselves in a death match to begin the unexpectedly competitive Sunday singles match. This time, Scheffler did the damage himself, blowing a chip to the edge of the green after a deception away from the green. Rahm made no mistakes throughout the three days of the tournament, and he wasn’t planning on teeing off on the final hole of the week. He casually stood up for birdie, while Scheffler missed the chip on the way back to win the match. The remaining round went to Scheffler, who suddenly looked at the scoreboard and saw that his American was running out of time.
A few hours later, Rickie Fowler conceded a short putt to Tommy Fleetwood and two things suddenly became official:
The Europeans won the Ryder Cup and the top U.S. player went winless in a team event…again.
The second (Scheffler) may ultimately be less important than the first (the results of this Ryder Cup), but the two are linked in a closer way than anyone on the American side would like to admit. The fact that Scheffler has now played in two team tournaments for the United States without a single win, a record of 0-5-3 since the start of the 2022 Presidents Cup, is directly related to his return to into arguably the best golfer in the world. world.
Included in that stretch is the absolute undressing Scheffler and his partner Brooks Koepka faced in their morning foursomes match against Ludvig Aberg and Viktor Hovland on Saturday — a session in which the United States desperately needed to mount a comeback, and in which Aberg and Hovland slammed the door shut with the largest margin of victory in an alternate shot match ever in the Ryder Cup, 9 and 7.
“After finishing on the 11th hole yesterday, I had plenty of time to rest and get ready for this morning,” Scheffler said with a grim chuckle on Sunday evening. “Pretty much all there is to say.”
No, the 9 and 7 victory didn’t singlehandedly sink the Americans, and by all accounts it was a historical aberration for two of the best players on the whole U.S. roster. But the thing about the Ryder Cup is that every match and every player matters. The best teams find a way to turn losses into halves; the losing teams find ways to turn halves into losses.
The Americans were the losing team this week for a number of reasons, but Scheffler’s profile makes him one of the biggest. Ryder Cups, after all, are won and lost by the stars. And in a week in which the Europeans rode their best players — Jon Rahm, Viktor Hovland and Rory McIlroy — to 10.5 points, the Americans rode Scheffler to a measly one.
That wasn’t good enough, even if Scheffler wasn’t necessarily bad in any of the matches he’d played — well, except for that Saturday morning match, which Scottie himself admitted was “terrible.”
“It’s a tough week, and sometimes you get on the wrong side of things,” Scheffler said. “It was pretty tough.”
It’s hard, and it’s even harder as Americans enter two long years of soul-searching before the Ryder Cup returns to Bethpage, New York. The United States will also be favorites there and, barring disaster, Scheffler will be part of the roster equation.
The question now is how his role on this roster will play out. No other player with Scheffler’s hitting ability has made it to America, but there may be some other players who could easily overcome the challenging 10-footers. The Americans need more this weekend in Rome – and they’ll need more if they’re serious about taking on the Rahm/McIlroy/Hovland trio in 2025. Losing 9 and 7 wouldn’t have been an option at that point – and it shouldn’t have happened now, not for a player of Scheffler’s caliber.
Scheffler knows this. That’s why he was found crying in the cart next to his wife, Meredith, after the fight.
“I was very emotional after the round because I care a lot about this tournament,” he said. “At the time, I felt like I had let these people down.”
It was tough, but the hardest pill to swallow came after the loss, when U.S. captain Zach Johnson elected to sit Scheffler on all four balls Saturday afternoon — the second time in the team’s last two events that Scheffler found myself sitting on the bench in the middle of a winless weekend.
Scheffler left the course and returned to the team room then, watching hopelessly as the U.S.’s best session of the week came in the lone one in which he did not participate.