Scottie Scheffler is currently away from the PGA Tour, and won’t be for a few months. He did his damage during the major championship season. And Ben Griffin is grateful for it.
Griffin earned his third PGA Tour victory of 2025 on Sunday when he shot a lights-out 63 at El Cardonal in Diamante, just a day after joking, “I heard Scottie wouldn’t be in the field in Cabo, so I felt I had a chance.”
Scheffler’s joke is not out of place, however brutal it may be. The last time they did it together, it was Scheffler who won the Procore Championship in Napa. Griffin finished solo second. Three months earlier, the tango took place at the Memorial, where Scheffler won first. Griffin again finished solo in second.
He got the upper hand a week before the Memorial, where Griffin won for the first time as an individual. (Scheffler finished T4). Griffin’s first Tour victory came at the Zurich Classic, a team event where he teamed up with Andrew Novak. This victory will now push him into the top 10 of the world rankings for the first time in his life, something that even his biggest supporters would have scoffed at just a few years ago.
Griffin’s recent rise has been well covered, as he left the professional ranks to become a mortgage broker in the early 1920s after playing golf in college in North Carolina. It wasn’t until early 2023 that he started playing at a PGA Tour-average level, and he stayed that way in recent years until 2025, when he leveled up in a way no one expected. Sunday’s victory is his eleventh global top 10 finish this calendar year.
He has become an elite putter despite using a new putter this week! – and also a ball striker of the highest level. That was evident on Sunday, where he birdied every par 3 at El Cardonal, and he even got a little emotional talking about it with Golf Channel’s Kira Dixon after the round.
“My dad always calls me Mr. Par-3,” Griffin said when it became official, a pause in his throat.
His wife Dana stood next to him during the interview. They’re getting married in a few weeks, and she got as emotional as her fiancé, a reminder that even a third win at a Fall Series event carries its own stakes.
“Three wins and marriage in the same year,” Griffin said in closing the interview, “it’s hard to beat.”
We will agree. With the third victory, Griffin joined Scheffler and Rory McIlroy as the only players to win three PGA Tour events this calendar year.
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