Scottie Scheffler normally wouldn’t be playing in the Procore Championship this week in Napa, California. The PGA Tour’s fall slate doesn’t typically draw many competitive fields, after all.
But with the Ryder Cup just weeks away, he didn’t think twice.
Advertisement
“It would be unusual for me to have four or five weeks off before the Masters or the U.S. Open or something like that,” Scheffler said Wednesday from the Silverado Resort, “so there’s no reason I should be doing that going into the Ryder Cup.”
The top-ranked golfer in the world is with nearly all of the U.S. team competing at the Procore Championship, which has been designated as the unofficial practice tournament for the Ryder Cup later this month. All but two members of the team are in the field. Xander Schauffele remained home with his family in Florida after the recent birth of his son, and Bryson DeChambeau is still ineligible to compete in Tour events after leaving for LIV Golf.
The practice event is different from what the U.S. team did two years ago. Some of them made a scouting trip of sorts to Rome ahead of that tournament, where the European team rolled to an easy win.
Advertisement
Though Bethpage Black in New York shouldn’t be as foreign to golfers as the Marco Simone Golf and Country Club in Rome was — Bethpage Black hosted the PGA Championship in 2019, for example — Scheffler would much rather compete. And, after how Rome went, the “conclusion that we came to” was that playing would be much more beneficial.
“I think having to come here, having the opportunity to come here and play this tournament is really important,” Scheffler said. “You can practice and prepare all you want at home, but there’s something different about playing tournament golf leading up [to the Ryder Cup.]”
Scheffler won five times on the PGA Tour this past season, including at both the PGA Championship and the British Open, and didn’t miss a single cut while racking up 16 top-10 finishes. He’s now just a U.S. Open win away from completing the career grand slam, too.
At the last Ryder Cup, though, Scheffler went 0-2-2.
“When I look back at the ’23 Cup, I think I halved two matches and lost two, so I think I left there without winning a single match and that hurt,” Scheffler said. “When you represent your country, you want to do your best. … It hurt a little bit because I didn’t feel like I was as prepared as I could have been. So going into this Cup I’ve put a lot of work into my game over the last couple years to get ready and to go play this event.”
Read the full article here