Scottie Scheffler joins Tiger Woods as second player ever to win Open Championship while ranked No. 1

With his win at The Open Championship over the weekend, Scottie Scheffler put himself in rare territory alongside Tiger Woods. According to a post from the DP World Tour on X, Woods and Scheffler are the only two golfers in history to win the event while simulataneously being ranked as the No. 1 player in the world.

The only difference is that Woods achieved the feat a total of three times while this is the first for Scheffler. Still, considering no one else has even done it one time, it’s an impressive accomplishment.

It was also the first Open Championship win overall in Scheffler’s career. He shot -17 to claim his 22nd professional win and his fourth victory at a major championship.

It marked 1,197 days since Scheffler’s first major win — incredibly, the exact same amount of days between Tiger Woods’ first and fourth major wins. With the victory, Scheffler joins Woods, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player as the only players to win a Masters, PGA Championship and The Open before age 30.

But while Scheffler has enjoyed plenty of success in the early part of his career, he also opened up on his struggles to deal with it. Earlier this week, Scheffler made headlines when he opened up on the lack of fulfillment that comes with being the best in the world.

“ I think it’s kind of funny,” Scheffler said. “I think I said something after the Byron this year [Nelson, which he won in a playoff in May] about it feels like you work your whole life to celebrate winning a tournament for a few minutes. It only lasts a few minutes, that kind of euphoric feeling. And to win the Byron Nelson Championship at home, I literally worked my entire life to become good at golf, to have an opportunity to win that tournament. And you win it, you celebrate. You get to hug your family, my sisters there. It’s such an amazing moment. And then it’s like, ‘OK, now what are we going to eat for dinner?’

“You know, life goes on. It’s great to be able to win tournaments and to accomplish the things I have in the game of golf … it brings tears to my eyes just to think about, because I’ve literally worked my entire life to become good at the sport and to have that kind of sense of accomplishment is a pretty cool feeling.”