By Steve Keating
AUGUSTA, Georgia (Reuters) – It is too early to anoint Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm as golf’s next Big Three but the trio are getting top billing at Augusta National this week with one of them likely to walk away on Sunday wearing a Masters Green Jacket.
The trio occupy the top three spots in the world rankings and have dominated the season, swapping the number one spot while winning a combined six PGA Tour events, triggering chatter at the year’s first major about a new Big Three for a new generation.
World number three Rahm, the 2021 U.S. Open champion described such talk as premature while world number two McIlroy, who needs a Masters win to complete the career Grand Slam of major titles, chuckled at the notion.
“I just had breakfast with Jon Rahm and that didn’t come up,” laughed McIlroy, when asked if the three had discussed their dominance.
“It just seems like one of us three is popping up every week we play with a chance to win,” added the Northern Irishman. “That’s the level that we all want to be at.
“I think that for me, anyway, seeing those two guys consistently performing at that level just pushes me to want to be better.”
It may be absurd to compare Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Gary Player, who combined for 34 major titles, to Scheffler, McIlroy and Rahm but on current form the present-day trio are in a league of their own.
Rahm made a blistering start to the PGA season, the Spaniard claiming wins at the Tournament of Champions, American Express and Genesis Invitational, while Scheffler has been on a roll in the run-up to his Masters defence, winning in Phoenix and at the unofficial fifth major the Players Championship.
McIlroy opened his campaign with victory at the CJ Cup and hoisted the trophy at the DP Tour’s Dubai Desert Classic.
“You can say that (the new Big Three), if we do it for at least five-plus years like many of those players did,” said Rahm. “For us to be compared to something like that, we have a very long way to go. It could be the start. But still a long way to go.”
World number one Scheffler would not be drawn into the Big Three discussion but put the trio’s domination down to a high level of consistency.
“We are definitely not making each other worse, that’s for sure,” said Scheffler. “I think you’ve seen just a pretty high level of consistency from us so far this year.
“I think if you look at a lot of the leaderboards, we’ve been pretty close to winning most of the elevated events.
“A lot of that is just good, healthy competition and hopefully we’ll continue to elevate ourselves through that competition and then the guys behind us will be nothing but motivated to get to where we are.”
(Reporting by Steve Keating in Augusta; Editing by Clare Fallon)
