Two-time Masters champion Scottie Scheffler has been the No. 1 player in the world for more than a year. Now, he’s looking forward to representing his country and adding “Olympian” to his resume.
“Playing for your country is always extremely exciting and it will be pretty surreal doing it on the Olympic stage,” Scheffler said in an interview with Team USA. “It’s also good bragging rights for people that tell me golf is not a sport — I can say it’s an Olympic sport.”
This will be Scheffler’s first time competing in the Olympics, and his first chance at a gold medal.
The Official World Golf Ranking from June 17 determined the 60-player field for the men’s competition. Countries may have two players, or up to four players if they are among the top 15 in the OWGR.
Team USA will be made up of Scheffler, Xander Schauffele, Wyndham Clark and Collin Morikawa.
In the Men’s Olympic Golf Rankings, Scheffler ranks first, Schauffele sits at No. 3, Clark comes in at No. 5 and Morikawa ranks seventh. Schauffele and Morikawa competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics with Schauffele winning the gold medal for Team USA in individual stroke play.
The Olympic field comprises 60 of the world’s top golfers from 33 countries. They will compete individually against each other as they would for any standard tournament, through stroke play.
“I think with the format of it it’s more of an individual tournament because there’s no real team aspect,” Scheffler said in an interview with The Dallas Morning News in June. “But as far as going over there and playing, I would approach it the same way I would a tournament here.”
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The men’s competition is Aug. 1 through Aug. 4 at Le Golf National, which has hosted the French Open all but two times since 1991 and is most famous for hosting the 2018 Ryder Cup.
The course, just outside Paris, opened in 1991 and is owned by the French Golf Federation. It’s a par-72 Albatros course with “daunting water hazards, vast undulating fairways, slick greens and innumerable links-style bunkers will provide drama and significant risk for the Olympic golfers,” according to Team USA.
Oddsmakers at BetMGM have Scheffler as the +350 favorite to win gold in Paris.
You could say Scheffler is on a roll. The University of Texas alum has won six of the 15 events he’s competed in this year and finished in the Top 10 in 13 events. He’s taken home more than $27 million in earnings, which breaks the PGA tour record for earnings in a season — a record he set last season.
Before he jets off to Paris, Scheffler will play in the 2024 Open Championship, the final major of the season, where he is a 5-1 favorite to win.
Also known as the British Open, the tournament will be played at Royal Troon Golf Club in Scotland. You can watch Scheffler in the 2024 Open Championship on NBC, USA Network and Peacock from Thursday, July 18 through Sunday, July 21.
