Like Tiger Woods, Scottie Scheffler has yet to answer Riviera’s question

A long list of golfers have excelled at Riviera Country Club.

Hogan. Snead. Watson. Nelson. Mickelson. They are not married. Faldo. Els. Scott. The list goes on.

The George C. Thomas design is one of golf’s great cathedrals. It hosts the US Opens and the PGA Championship. Since 1973, it has played host to the PGA Tour’s LA Open, now the Genesis Invitational. It’s a place where big players win. It is a course where legends want to put their names in history.

And it’s a place where the best players of their generation – Jack, Tiger and Rory – failed to get over the line. You can suspect the poa annua greens with nodules or the unexplained Riviera voodoo. But the three legends of golf have yet to find much success in an area where, in theory, they should play to their strengths. The course has well-documented connections to Augusta National and asks players to control their spin and trajectory while attacking small, treacherous greens.

“It makes no sense,” Max Homa said in 2023, about not being able to beat Woods at the Riviera. “It’s a double golf course, and he’s the greatest metal player that ever lived. It really makes no sense.”

“He’s a great iron player and you have to be an iron player to play well here,” Adam Scott said at the time of Woods. “That could be a mystery and probably the end of his career. It’s a little inexplicable.”

Woods made 15 starts at Riviera, including his PGA Tour debut as a 16-year-old amateur in 1992. He made 10 cuts but only three top 10s, including a runner-up finish to Ernie Els in 1999.

“It’s frustrating in the sense that this is a golf course that I’ve always enjoyed visually,” Woods said in 2024. “Like I said, it’s a fader’s pleasure from the tee shots and, like I said, I’ve been a very good iron player, but for some reason I didn’t make it in this event except for one reason it just happened by chance.

Nicklaus has won twice at the Riviera but never won. McIlroy’s T2 on Sunday was his best finish at Pacific Palisades.

Although the sample size isn’t as big as others at the moment, the haunted greats of the Riviera club could add another member if things don’t change.

World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler came to the Riviera with his chosen history. He missed the cut at the 2017 US Amateur and missed the cut as a novice at the Genesis Open in 2018. He entered this week with four top-20 finishes as the champion at Riviera but had never finished inside the top six shots. He came off the back of 18 consecutive top 10s (which have now ended).

Even after slow starts at the WM Phoenix Open and Pebble Beach Pro-Am, Scheffler made a run at the medal before falling just short. That didn’t happen at the Riv, where he opened with a 3-over 74 and found himself walking away from the cut.

“I don’t know, this place and I have a weird relationship,” Scheffler said after completing a par putt on the 18th on Friday to make the cut. “I feel like I can play well out here and I haven’t.”

Scheffler staked a claim on the leaderboard over the weekend — he said he benefited from early times and less chewed greens — but finished in a tie for 12th in a place that puzzled the sport’s pundits.

Like Woods and McIlroy, Scheffler had no explanation as to why Riviera – the golfer’s course – did not meet him. He faced tough conditions on Thursday and gained early weekend times to move up the leaderboard. In his career at Riviera, Scheffler has had great weeks off the tee and greens. His placings have been average, but he has finished in the top 10 with one close finish, which came in 2022 when he finished 7th. This past week, he ranked 36th in Strokes Gained: Approach, losing 0.739 shots per round.

“When you look at this golf course and look at it on paper, it looks easy,” Scheffler said before the tournament. “Then you start playing it and you hit the ball on 2 and you’re like, Man this hole is tough, you don’t hit the fairway on 3 and you’re like, shoot, I don’t know how I’m going to hit the green here, and the golf course just eats away at you over time.

As Scheffler’s dominance over professional golf has grown, he has been getting his name in the same sentence as Woods. The story repeated itself at Riviera as Scheffler, like Woods, looked for ways to solve the famed Southern California track. Even on a day when he posted a low number, the responses pointed to him.

“Maybe a little bit,” Scheffler said after his third-round 66 when asked if he felt better about the course. “But sometimes it felt strange.”

On Sunday night, Woods, the tournament director, greeted winner Jacob Bridgeman on the hill. The 15-time major winner joked that Bridgeman, who beat McIlroy by one, now has something Woods doesn’t.

The answer to the puzzle that Woods, McIlroy and Scheffler are still trying to solve.

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