Drama killer

 Tiger Woods was only around for a couple of rounds at Augusta this week, before returning to what he is now, which is an old man with an old man's infirmities. Shooting 14 over par across the last 36 holes of the Masters will do that to a guy.

He blew to a 10-over 82 on Saturday, then added a 4-over 76 yesterday to render his signature Sunday Red little more than a nostalgic echo of days gone by.  He shot 16-over for the tournament, his worst score ever in  professional event and one that placed him last among the 60 golfers who made the 36-hole cut. Among those he finished behind: 61-year-old Vijay Singh and 58-year-old Jose Maria Olazabal.

Tiger's right there with them now, someone for whom the galleries still cheer not because of what he might yet do, but because of what he once did.

But you know something?

In a bodily-transference sort of way, somehow he still won the green jacket.

Long after Woods departed the premises, see, Scottie Scheffler did a thing, and if it wasn't Tiger breaking everyone's will on Masters Sunday, it was something very like it. Squeezed all the juice out of the last round, is what he did. Unplugged the dramatic oil pan and let the drama run right out of it, to use a particularly tortured metaphor.

He started the day with a one-stroke lead over Collin Morikawa, and there were half-a-dozen others within striking distance. It shaped up to be yet another encore of glorious Masters chaos, with Amen Corner miracles sharing the stage with car crashes and dumpster fires and wheels coming off and someone finally dropping a road-map putt to stagger off with the win.

Instead ... we get Scottie Scheffler pulling a Tiger.

Which is to say, he crushed the life out of everyone, shot by shot and without pity. Made seven birdies on the day, the most in a final round by a Masters winner since Nick Faldo did it 35 years ago. Made two of those birds back-to-back on the back nine, when the leader's knees are traditionally supposed to turn to jelly.

Not Scheffler. He never got rattled, never presented an opening, simply left the field choking on his dust with a final-round 68 and a four-stroke win over Ludvig Aberg, a Swede playing in his first Masters.

Aberg and Tommy Fleetwood carded 69s. Just about everyone else came down with the final-round flu;  only Tom Kim, deep in the field, shot a lower round on the day with a 66.

This is not to say Scheffler is the next Tiger, because there isn't one and likely will never be. But his grip on the game right now at least approaches the psychological dominance Tiger once held. If there was a Tiger cringe mode back in the day, there was a Scottie Scheffler cringe mode this weekend, with virtually everyone expecting him to win and Scheffler obliging.

Sunday's green jacket was his second in three years, and he's now won eight times on the PGA Tour in the last 26 months. The first man ever to win back-to-back Players Championships, he has, at 27,  played in five Masters and won two of them.

The only player to do better -- two wins in three starts -- was named Horton Smith. And he did it 88 years ago.

 This is historic ground Scheffler is trampling, in other words. His win Sunday, for instance, made him the fourth-youngest player to win at least two green jackets.

The only ones who were younger?

Their names are Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods and Seve Ballesteros. Perhaps you've heard of them.