Masters 2026: Less than his best still good enough for Scottie Scheffler to beat everyone but the champ

AUGUSTA, Ga. — In the early days of his pro career, Tiger Woods rankled a few of his peers with the very honest and very accurate assessment that he had won a time or two with less than his A-game. The truth hurt. They just didn’t care to hear it.

Well, Scottie Scheffler just completed his seventh Masters on Sunday with undoubtedly one of his more impressive performances, and the truth is that he had a decidedly poor week at Augusta National Golf Club and still darn near won the thing for a third time.

Scheffler is surprisingly good at golf even when he is not.

The 29-year-old Texan clearly miscalculated in spotting Rory McIlroy 12 shots through 36 holes. That was a stroke too many. He settled for second place after a closing four-under 68 on Sunday and had to wonder what might have been in the 90th Masters had he played just a smidge better. Even without the smidge, the guy beat all but the defending champion.

“Overall, I'm not going to hold too many regrets, but yeah, definitely a bit disappointed now,” Scheffler said after finishing at 11-under 277 for his ninth top-five finish in his last 17 majors, four of them wins. “But like I said, I started the weekend 12 shots back and ended up only one shot back. If I am going to blame anything, I should probably blame the first two rounds before I start looking at stuff from the last couple.”

The last couple were quite exceptional even if they looked as disheveled as an untucked shirt, particularly on Sunday.

After getting off to a notably slow start—something of a habit throughout this season—Scheffler applied some of that World No. 1 balm to his scorecard, shooting a bogey-free 65, his career best at Augusta, to get into the hunt. He did that without a birdie on either par-5 hole on the back nine. On Sunday he went bogey-free again, thanks to holing a few sizable par putts.

Scheffler became the only player since 1942 to play the final 36 holes of the Masters bogey free. In fact, he played his final 39 holes without a bogey, his last one coming at the par-5 15th hole on Friday.

His par-5 scoring was just one of several statistical markers that suggested he should have been nowhere near the lead. Scheffler was just five under par on the par-5s. His 4.68 average on those holes was the highest of his career.

There was not a single aspect of his game that stood out as exceptional, whether it was 22nd in driving accuracy (42 of 56), 13th in greens in regulation (50 of 72) or 31st in putts per green in regulation (89 total) or 40th in birdie conversion (14 of 50).

Oh wait. There was one handsome statistic for the reigning PGA and British Open champion: Scheffler suffered just five bogeys. That was the fewest in the field. And in that figure, you recognize the essence of Scheffler as a golfer. He is a bulldog who sees par as a chew toy he refuses to surrender.

“I felt like really over the course of four days I did a really good job of handling myself and being committed to what I could control,” he said. “Sometimes it's just a matter of the things going the right way for you, and I felt like this week I did some things where it felt like I could really get hot and the putt didn't fall or didn't get the right bounce. Just those little things to gain momentum within the tournament that didn't feel like was happening for me as much this week.”

The finish to this Masters proved for Scheffler a continuation of the frustrations he has encountered this year. He owns 20 PGA Tour titles but hasn’t lifted a trophy since January—unless you count the birth of his second son, Remy, on March 27. His slow starts to events have proved costly. Yet he battles as hard as anyone in the game.

In the end, Scheffler continues to show that he doesn’t need his A-game to prove just how talented he is with a club in his hand and the scent of competition beckoning. Having far from his best is still far better than most.

“Over the weekend I put up a good fight, did a lot of good stuff in order to give myself a chance,” he said. “Just came up short.”