Scottie Scheffler towers over the field at the Players Championship

Scottie Scheffler grabbed the lead on Sunday at the Players Championship and made sure no one could take it from him, winning by five shots for his sixth PGA Tour title in the last 13 months

Thirteen months is a tiny fraction of the life of a professional golfer, but Scottie Scheffler has managed to cram a career’s worth of moments and achievements into that short time frame. He won his first PGA Tour event. He won the Masters. He’s earned more than $25 million on the course. And he might have saved his best performance for Sunday at TPC Sawgrass.

Scheffler put on a masterclass on how to close out a golf tournament as he added the Players Championship to his already-impressive performance. As players like Tyrrell Hatton, Hideki Matsuyama, and Max Homa tried to track him down, Scheffler kept increasing his lead until the back-nine became just a simple coronation for the new top-ranked player in the world.

Scheffler, who began the day with a two-shot lead, saw his advantage disappear quickly after an early bogey. Then, just as he did last April when a chip-in on the third hole on Sunday at Augusta allowed him to slip on the Green Jacket, he holed out from the rough on the eighth for his first birdie of the round. He also birdied the ninth and 10th. And the 11th. The lead was now five shots, the hopes of the rest of the field quickly dashed.

Scheffler did it not by trying to protect his lead and being overly cautious. He stuck to the same game plan he had all week, the one that got him into this position in the first place. Stepping to the tee on the short par-four 12th hole, he took out his three-wood and whacked his drive just off the green, leading to his fifth birdie in a row.

“(Caddie Ted Scott) and I had a conversation when we were walking down 11 fairway. I was like, ‘Hey, I just want to make sure we’re on the same page. We’re just playing the golf course like we always do.’ He said, ‘Yeah, of course. Why would you change anything,” Scheffler said following his victory. “And that was our discussion and we had picked our spots well all week, and I wasn’t going to change the game plan just because I had a few-shot lead.”

By the time Scheffler found dry ground off the tee on the famous “Island Green” 17th, the tournament was effectively over. All that was left was for him to close out a three-under round of 69 and post 17-under for the tournament, five shots ahead of Hatton.

Lessons from past opportunities serve Scottie Scheffler well

Holding on to leads hasn’t always been this easy for the tall, sweet-swinging Texan. He admitted before the final round of the Masters last year that he got so nervous he began to cry. At the Tour Championship in August, he led by six shots during the final round but lost to a hard-charging Rory McIlroy. Scheffler is still early in his PGA Tour career, but he’s already had plenty of opportunities to learn what it takes to win, how to handle these big moments, and deal with these tough golf courses.

Beginning this season, the PGA Tour designated a handful of events as “elevated” tournaments, with bigger prize pools and star-studded fields. It’s just the situation that’s proving to cater to Scheffler. He’s already won two of these designated events this season. “I think I get excited for a good, hard test. I feel that I can find a way to make pars and hang in there. And I mean, this week I think I had five bogeys for the whole week. Around this place that’s really, really hard to do,” he said.

“That’s probably what I’m most proud of is just playing so solid. I think I just like the challenge of harder golf courses.”

Last February, Scheffler had no wins on the PGA Tour. Now, just 392 days later, he has six. Only Tiger Woods and David Duval ever won their first six PGA Tour events so quickly. Woods and Jack Nicklaus were the only ones to hold both the Masters and Players Championship titles simultaneously. Scheffler is already in some elite company.

And he’s just getting started. Scheffler is a deeply religious man. He has a strong family backing, led by his wife Meredith. He and Scott have formed a strong rapport. He has the talent, the support system, and the demeanor to keep this run going for a while.

On Sunday, he showed that when he’s on his game, there is nobody on the PGA Tour that can stand up to him.