Rory McIlroy Says Scottie Scheffler Is 'The Bar We're All Trying to Get To' After Win

Scottie Scheffler continued his run of dominance on Sunday, winning the Open Championship by four strokes, his third major championship in the past two years and fourth overall.

After Scheffler's victory at the Dunluce Course, Rory McIlroy gave him his flowers.

"None of us could hang with Scottie this week," he told reporters. "He's an incredible player. He's been dominant this week, but honestly, he's been dominant for the last couple of years. He is the bar we're all trying to get to. In a historical context, you could argue there's maybe only two or three players in the history of the game who have been on a run like the one Scottie's been on here for the last 24 or 36 months. So, incredibly impressive. He's a very worthy winner, but also he's a great person and I think he's a wonderful ambassador for our game as well. I'm really happy for him and Meredith and his family."

Scheffler is indeed on an all-time tear at the moment:

Just don't tell Scheffler he's on a run reminiscent of prime Tiger Woods.

"I still think they're a bit silly," he told reporters regarding comparisons to Woods. "I think Tiger stands alone in the game of golf."

Perhaps. But those comparisons are going to continue, considering even his peers are making them:

There are other reasons the comparisons to Woods aren't quite apt, though they have less to do with results and more to do with Scheffler not moving the needle culturally in the way Woods did, partly by design.

"He doesn't care to be a superstar," Jordan Spieth told reporters. "He's not transcending the game like Tiger did. He's not bringing it to a non-golf audience necessarily. He doesn't want to go do the stuff that a lot of us go do, corporately, anything like that. He just wants to get away from the game and separate the two because I know that he felt it was too much, that he was taking it with him. Whenever he made that switch, I don't know when it was, but he has hobbies. He's always with his family. I think it's more so the difference in personality from any other superstar that you've seen in the modern era and maybe in any sport. I don't think anybody is like him."

Shane Lowry believes there are some aesthetic differences in play as well.

"If Scottie's feet stayed stable and his swing looked like Adam Scott's, we'd be talking about him in the same words as Woods," he told reporters. "I just think because it doesn't look so perfect, we don't talk about him like that. I think he's just incredible to watch. ... His bad shots are really good. That's when you know he's really good."

Indeed, the results are the results. Scheffler is at the pinnacle of the golfing world at the moment, dominating in a fashion that has only been replicated by other titans of the sport.