"We've never seen anything like that" - Max Homa talks about the 'daunting' task of playing alongside Scottie Scheffler
Just like everyone else at Augusta National, Max Homa ended the fourth round staring up at Scottie Scheffler on the leaderboard. The golfer finished tied for third with a more than decent four-under par, but it was not nearly enough to take Scheffler down.
The World No. 1 golfer shot 11 under par and cruised somewhat comfortably to victory at the end, though he did find himself tied with Homa and others at various points. It's all very impressive, and it poses a unique challenge for basically every other golfer - and that includes Homa.
Homa said:
"I mean the gap seems to be quite large, he's gone first, first, second, first. Three of those events are the best fields we've got. One of them is another really good field on a difficult golf course. I think we've seen this over the years, as far as excellence over a bit of time. His seems to be sustained a bit longer than I can remember from a lot of people."
He went on to say that Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and others like them have done this, but Scheffler has done it for a year in Homa's estimation. The golfer continued:
"Is it more challening, more daunting? It's more challenging. It's inspiring, I would say to look at your own game more closely... I think because of the Tiger era, it's more daunting because we've never seen anything like that."
Homa also mentioned that he doesn't believe it's shocking that Scheffler is so good or that he can perform at such a high level for so many consecutive tournaments.
Scheffler won the Arnold Palmer Invitational, a Signature Event on tour. He followed that up by becoming the first person in history to repeat as the Players Championship winner.
One start later, he fell short by a single stroke of winning his third straight event, but more than bounced back to win the Masters by four strokes. He's in rarefied air and that win made him the fourth-youngest multi-time Masters winner.
Scottie Scheffler is in a league of his own
Scottie Scheffler is and has been the world's best golfer for a while, but the gap is getting larger every week. For a while last year, Scheffler, Jon Rahm and Rory McIlroy traded the number one rank between each other, but Scheffler took it and ran with it at a certain point.
With how well he's playing, it's hard to imagine him losing it any time soon. Rahm is on LIV Golf now, meaning it's very hard for him to rank up and virtually impossible to overtake the number one player.
McIlroy hasn't been playing at an extremely high level, so Scheffler has a wide lead over number two. The gap between numbers one and two on OWGR is comparable to the gap between two (McIlroy) and 80th overall (Robert Macintyre).
It's no surprise that Scheffler is once again favored this weekend at the RBC Heritage. Can he capture his fourth win in five starts?