Scottie Scheffler defends at the Memorial, first to do so since Tiger

Back in his heyday, on the way to collecting a record 18 major titles and 73 PGA Tour titles, Jack Nicklaus made winning look routine. As fellow Hall of Famer Tom Weiskopf once put it, “Jack knew he was going to beat you. You knew Jack was going to beat you. And Jack knew you knew he was going to beat you.”

The same could soon be said by Scottie Scheffler’s rivals.

On Sunday, Scheffler converted his ninth straight outright 54-hole lead since the 2023 WM Phoenix Open. This time the world No. 1 shot 2-under 70 at Muirfield Village Golf Club in Dublin, Ohio, to win the 2025 Memorial Tournament by four strokes over Ben Griffin. 

It was an impressive enough feat for Trevor Immelman to tag Scheffler with a new nickname.

“We might have to start calling him The Closer,” CBS’s Immelman remarked on the network’s broadcast. 

Later, his CBS colleague Ian Baker-Finch doubled down, comparing Scheffler to Mariano Rivera, the Hall of Fame closer for the New York Yankees.

“He never loses,” Baker-Finch said.

Scheffler, who signed for a 72-hole total of 10-under 278, became the first golfer to win consecutive Memorial Tournament titles since Tiger Woods pulled off the three-peat from 1999-2001. It also marked Scheffler’s third PGA Tour title in his last four starts and sweet No. 16 for his career.

Scheffler paced himself with a pair of 70s in the first two rounds before making his move with four birdies in his final five holes on Saturday. It added up to 68 and his first bogey-free round at Muirfield Village in 19 career rounds to assume the 54-hole lead by one stroke over Griffin.

“Obviously, Scottie Scheffler's the best player in the world, but No. 1 can be beat,” Griffin said on the eve of the final round.

Not this time. Scheffler was shaky early, missing the first four greens, but his short game kept bailing him out. Griffin’s three-putt bogey at the fourth stretched Scheffler’s lead to two. He tacked on a birdie at the par-5 seventh to improve to 9 under. Scheffler’s streak extended to 31 straight holes without a bogey until dropping a shot at No. 10, his lone hiccup on the weekend. His lead was trimmed to one. As Scheffler is apt to do, he bounced back with a birdie at 11, pouring in a 14-foot birdie putt. Griffin missed a birdie try from 4 feet and compounded his error with bogeys on the next two holes. After that, the rest of Scheffler's closest competitors fell by the wayside.

"The guy's relentless," said Sepp Straka (70), who finished third. "He loves competition, and he doesn't like giving up shots." 

“What impresses me the most is his club face control is elite," said Jordan Spieth, who finished T-7. "It's maybe the best there's ever been as far as club face control. So his consistency is ridiculous. And then that just leads to his distance control being phenomenal.”

Case in point, Scheffler drilled a fairway wood from 250 yards at the par-5 15^th that landed near the hole and hopped 14 feet past the hole to set up a 2-putt birdie.

Ahead of the Memorial, Nicklaus raved that Scheffler, "plays a lot like I did,” and after Scheffler's victory he praised him for the way he took a page out of the Nicklaus playbook, hitting fairways and greens and letting his competitors blink.

"That's what the best player in the world does. He comes out and does things the right way and manages it, and he sees who is on the leaderboard and who is challenging him," Nicklaus said. "I mean, Ben Griffin's a nice player, Sepp Straka is a nice player, Nick Taylor is a nice player. Those were all the guys that were there basically coming down the stretch. But he knows that those guys, you know, are not in his league."

Nicklaus added: "He doesn't want to brag about what he does. But he has the ability to bring his level to whatever level it needs to be. That's what good players do. And, you know, he's not a good player, he's a great player. I mean, look at the record that he has had the last few years. It's unbelievable."

After a pedestrian start — by his standard — to the season following surgery to his right hand after an accident making ravioli on Christmas, Scheffler certainly has rounded into form. He became the first player to win three Tour events by four or more shots in consecutive seasons since Sam Snead, Ben Hogan and Byron Nelson in 1945 and 1946, according to ESPN Research. [Nelson did it from 1944 to 46.]

Griffin canned a 12-foot eagle at 15 and sank a 28-foot birdie at 16 to cut his deficit to two shots and made it interesting until he doubled 17. He shot 73 and remains the hottest golfer on the planet not named Scheffler. He has twno wins, a runner-up at the Memorial and a T-8 at the PGA Championship in his last six starts.

"This is one of the best fields in golf so I'm definitely proving further that I belong at the top in this game. It's just I've gotten to a point where I really like winning," said Griffin, expressing a sense of disappointment in falling short.

Rickie Fowler was also a winner at the Memorial

The other winner for the week? Playing on a sponsor exemption, Rickie Fowler closed in 73 to finish T-7 and earn a spot in the British Open in July as the top finisher not previously qualified. [Fowler had the better Official World Golf Ranking than Brandt Snedeker, who shot 65 and also finished T-7, to break the tie.]

But for the second year in a row, the winner's handshake from Nicklaus behind the 18th green belonged to Scheffler.

"Well, you did it again," Nicklaus said.