McIlroy, Scheffler keep crowd buzz going at Players, but not at Tiger level

• The current top three golfers in the world, Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, and Xander Schauffele, played together at The Players Championship but failed to draw the same crowd excitement as Tiger Woods.
• Despite their accomplishments and solid play, the trio’s presence didn’t generate the same buzz or crowd engagement as when Woods is on the course.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH – If any further evidence is needed to confirm how different life is on the PGA Tour without Tiger Woods, a 36-hole pairing the past two days of the world’s top three golfers at The Players Championship provided it. 

For entertainment and shot-making purposes, it’s hard to get a much better grouping for fans than Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele. 

They own a combined eight majors between them and three Players titles, including Scheffler raising the trophy the past two years. 

So, name or facial recognition of golf’s current Big Three wouldn’t be much of a problem for even casual golf fans. They know all three just by their first names. 

But that power-packed trio didn’t translate into producing the same wow factor as when Tiger is on the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass or anywhere near the leaderboard. 

During their 4-hour, 57-minute round on Friday, where McIlroy shot a four-under-par 68 to stand two shots behind co-leaders Min Woo Lee and Akshay Bhatia, and Scheffler (70) finished six shots off the pace, there was clearly not the same buzz despite comparable crowd numbers. 

While fans periodically called out their names, including a polite teenager saying in a moderately loud tone, “Let’s go, Mr. McIlroy!” as he walked up the 14th fairway, it was by no means a boisterous gallery considering the group’s phenomenal accomplishments. 

Schauffele, who shot 73 Friday and was disappointed to be flirting with the cut line at one-under-par 143 in relatively easy scoring conditions, had a simple explanation for why his group doesn’t generate a Tiger-like vibe from the crowd.

“Yeah, I mean Scottie, Rory and I, we’re not going to be throwing our shoulders out fist-pumping anything, so I’m sure that would fire a crowd up a little bit more,” said Schauffele.

The Tiger presence is just different 

Among the people walking the entire 18 holes with the world’s top three golfers was Bobby Stewart, a Tour security consultant the past eight years and former captain with the St. Johns County sheriff’s office. 

Stewart has probably spent as much time on a golf course with Woods as anyone except maybe his caddies or people from his small inner circle. 

During Woods’ 71 rounds at the Players since 1997, and dozens of various elevated Tour events at non-majors over the past three decades, Stewart was almost always assigned security duty whenever Woods teed it up. 

“I did the math a few years ago and it was over 550 miles walking with Tiger,” said Stewart. 

As he walked up the 12th fairway with the Scheffler-McIlroy-Schauffele group Friday, it didn’t take Stewart long to pinpoint what felt different about accompanying these stars on a golf course in comparison to Woods. 

“I think the [crowd] numbers are pretty much the same,” said Stewart. “But in the old days, it was always Tiger versus the other guys [in his group]. So after he hit his shot, the crowd would start walking instead of waiting for his playing partners to hit. 

“In this group, the interest is pretty much divided, so you don’t have people doing that.” 

Stewart was spot on with that assessment. While Scheffler appeared to have a slight edge as the crowd favorite over McIlroy and Schauffele, it’s nothing like the popularity gap between Woods and anybody else. 

The Players simply has a different feel when Tiger is lurking near or atop a leaderboard. 

Crowd more polite than rambunctious 

To be fair to Players crowds, this isn’t the Ryder Cup, a New York-based U.S. Open or the former Phoenix Waste Management Open (now W.M. Open), where fans tend to take rowdiness to a different level. 

Plus, Scheffler, McIlroy and Schauffele competing together on a Friday morning isn’t the same as them dueling for the lead on late Sunday afternoon, where crowds have had time to indulge in a few more libations and up their verbosity. 

But if Tiger had been in McIlroy’s position to start the day and shot himself either into the lead or into a first-place tie — as Rory did for a good two hours — it’s hard to imagine the decibel levels around the Stadium Course not being significantly higher. 

Nobody around the 10th green at 8:25 a.m. needed a liquid jolt of java, espresso or any form of coffee. McIlroy woke everybody up by chipping in for a birdie from 26 feet, 4 inches to move into the first of several temporary ties for the lead. 

“That seemed pretty loud,” Scheffler said of the crowd reaction. “But after that, he just played solid, boring golf.” Then he jokingly added: “Man, how terrible is that. I hate that for him.” 

Despite McIlroy stringing together six birdies on his first 11 holes without a bogey — and arguably being the world’s biggest global golf star outside of you-know-who — the Players crowd provided little more than polite applause as he stayed atop the leaderboard or close to it. 

Schauffele was willing to accept some blame for the lack of fan rowdiness around their group, saying he played “really bad” shortly after signing for his 73. 

“I mean, I didn’t really do a whole lot to fire them up today,” Schauffele said. “Rory did some good stuff there, but he didn’t hole out or do anything crazy.” 

Schauffele can be excused for forgetting about McIlroy’s opening hole chip-in, seeing as how it happened over five hours before his media interview.  

But the 31-year-old Californian, who captured the PGA Championship and The Open last year, was right about why his group couldn’t elicit the kind of crowd buzz associated with the golf icon who wears red on Sunday. 

“We didn’t have a whole lot to pump fist at, to be completely honest,” said Schauffele. “So I mean, there’s a reason it’s called the Tiger effect. 

“I think all the guys in the group typically play pretty good golf, but no one does it better than Tiger.” 

Not just playing the game, but invoking those Players crowd roars and unmistakable buzz with just one pump of his fist. 

Gfrenette@jacksonville.com: (904) 359-4540; Follow him on X, formerly Twitter, at @genefrenette