Scottie Scheffler must break a Ryder Cup curse to avoid becoming USA’s next Tiger Woods
How do you explain it? The voodoo. The curse. The magic.
What is it about the Ryder Cup that used to somehow make Ian Poulter into one of the greatest golfers to ever live?
Or, more pertinently given Friday’s events at Bethpage Black, what is it about the Ryder Cup that somehow makes Scottie Scheffler no longer one of the greatest golfers to ever live?
We will likely never know, and yet theories were abound on Long Island after another disastrous day of Ryder Cup golf as Scheffler’s worst nightmare played out again.
At one point in the morning, the world number one was 12 down through his last 16 holes in foursomes play. Barely credible numbers for one of the best to ever swing a golf club. On BBC radio they theorised that it could be the weight of carrying a partner, on the American broadcast they hypothesised that it could be the pressure of being world number one. And it does hark back to the player that Scheffler aspires to emulate.
The only players to lose twice on the first day of a Ryder Cup while top of the world rankings are Ian Woosnam (1991), Tiger Woods (1999, 2002)…and now Scheffler himself (2025).
Not the emulating he was hoping for.
It means American world number ones have lost five straight foursomes matches at Ryder Cups; a record going back to 2010.
As wild and excitable as the crowd were on the first tee before dawn, people packing into grandstands and clinging onto the course’s undulations in hope of seeing Bryson De Chambeau’s unique display of brawn and brain, a relaxed-looking Scheffler went off in the second match knowing that De Chambeau’s putt on the first green had already put the USA ahead. The wind was in his sails.
Yet what followed was a tempest, and at its centre, often gazing with his mouth slightly agog in disbelief as another putt rolled past its intended target was the best player on Earth. He and Henley won just two of the 15 holes they managed in the morning session and never had a lead. Rather, they trailed by five by hole 12 and only managed to prolong their agony by birdieing the par-five 13th.
“I felt like Russ and I did some good things,” he said by the 15th green, where Ludvig Aberg and Matt Fitzpatrick had completed a 5&3 win over the American duo.
“We just didn't hole enough putts early. We had some chances. I think the putts just didn't fall.”
A couple of years ago there was a feeling that if Scheffler were to figure out his putting then he could be great. He has somehow exceeded those expectations, and easily so. On tour he is rarely less than imperious, not simply the best player in the world but the best player by far. Per Data Gold’s rankings, widely considered the best publicly available analytical model, the distance from Scheffler to the second-best player in the world (Rahm) is the same as from Rahm to Chris Kirk, the 49th-ranked player in the world. The prophecy came true. But repeatedly it was the flat stick that let him down here, on the biggest stage in team golf and when his team needed its best player to step up.
If you were looking to pep up Scottie Scheffler after an opening session from hell, you’d struggle for silver linings. The best you could probably find is that at least he got some unexpected rest, having been so thoroughly vanquished that his morning was done and dusted by the 15th hole.
It did not help his cause.
Sent straight back out to play with J.J. Spaun in the first of the afternoon fourballs, the American duo won the first hole and then didn’t win another all day. Scheffler has played in both sessions but is yet to set foot on the 17th tee box and once again it was the putting that deserted him, missing key attempts on 11, 12 and 13 then finding some form only for Jon Rahm to step up his own game in what became a spectacular bout of two heavyweights slugging it out.
Scottie Scheffler's Ryder Cup record through nine matches (2021, 2023, and 2025) is now two wins, four losses, and three ties (2-4-3). He is 0-3 in foursomes, 1-0-2 in fourballs, and 1-1-1 in singles matches.
3.5 points from nine matches simply makes no sense. And it was in trying to make sense of it that thoughts turned to others who have suffered a similar fate.
Tiger Woods is probably the greatest golfer of all-time and yet he won on just one of his eight Ryder Cup appearances. He wasn’t blameless. 13 wins, 21 losses and 3 ties constitute unmistakable yet unexplainable failure.
Which is why it might make sense to consider the flip side. That is to ask not why does the Ryder Cup make these great players into mere mortals but why does it also make mere mortals into greats.
“I've never really sat down to try and evaluate how that happens and why that happens. It's just a very simple form of golf,” Ian Poulter said about his own remarkable record at his last cup in Whistling Straits in 2021. 15 wins, 8 losses and just two halved matches is pretty damn good, but a perfect record in his six singles matches takes the biscuit.
“I hate losing,” Poulter added. “When you play match play, you know what you have to do when you tee up on the first hole. You can control a match. You can dictate a match. You can play certain shots to try and put your opponent under pressure. You can't do that in stroke play really unless it comes down to the back nine and the group you're in you're actually clear of the rest of the field.”
Scheffler is accustomed to the latter scenario but seemingly uncomfortable with the former. On several occasions in the afternoon when Rahm and Sepp Straka presented Scheffler with a window of opportunity the Texan walked straight into a door. It was sometimes narrow but there were putts like the one he missed on 12 which started off-target and went further astray. It was a level of imprecision you simply don’t expect from a master of his craft. As the sun came out and the temperature rose on Friday afternoon in Long Island, Scheffler couldn’t stay cool.
“I've never really sat down to try and evaluate how that happens and why that happens. It's just a very simple form of golf,” said Poulter.
“You never play the what-if game. You don't ever look at options around the green to say, here's the right place to miss, here's the wrong place to miss. It's single-minded focus on your target. It's really simplified.
“The more simple it is, the easier it is for my brain to understand and aggressively go at those targets. Again, stroke play you're plodding into position. This isn't the case here.”
Perhaps Scheffler is a plodder. Stylistically it rings true, a player more devastating for his sheer consistency and quality than for anything flashy. Poulter, famously, has never shied away from attention while the mild-mannered Longhorn prefers to barbecue with his neighbours back home.
Tomorrow Scheffler will have a chance to redeem himself. Sunday too, if the hosts can keep things competitive. It’s not something he’s probably ever thought, but he could do with channeling his inner Ian Poulter.
