PONTE VEDRA BEACH — A Tiger Woods sighting didn’t happen as many had hoped during the 50th edition of The Players Championship.

World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler picked up the slack and delivered a pretty good impression of golf’s ultimate closer. He also did something Woods didn’t at the PGA Tour’s showcase event.

With a bogey-free 8-under 64 Sunday at TPC Sawgrass, Scheffler tied the lowest final round by a winner — joining David Love III (2003) and Fred Couples (1996) — to become the tournament’s first back-to-back winner.

Scheffler’s 20-under-par 268 total is the lowest winning score since Greg Norman went 24-under in 1994.

“It’s tough enough to win one Players,” he said. “To have [done] it back-to-back is extremely special.”

Scheffler is starting to make winning look easy.

A week after he cruised to a 5-shot victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Scheffler erased a 5-shot deficit to equal the largest comeback at TPC Sawgrass, joining Justin Leonard (1998) and Henrik Stenson (2009).

But Leonard trailed just two players while Stenson was behind just one entering the final round. Scheffler had to leap-frog five players.

“That’s why we put in all the work to be able to finish off tournaments and to play well at the right time,” he said. “Going into days like today it’s nice coming out on top, for sure.”

Scheffler picked up his eighth PGA Tour win while nursing an injury.

...continued

©2024 Orlando Sentinel. Visit orlandosentinel.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.