History appears to be somewhat repeating itself for Ben Griffin, with the American recovering from a slow start to the year to produce a superb performance at the Charles Schwab Challenge this past week.
Of course, Griffin was always going to struggle to replicate his 2025 season this year. He won the Zurich Classic of New Orleans with Andrew Novak, before going on to triumph at Colonial 12 months ago.
Advertisement
He is still awaiting his first victory of 2026. But he appears to have turned a corner after missing three cuts in a row earlier in the year.
Griffin finished inside the top 10 at TPC Louisiana, before going on to finish third at both the Cadillac Championship and the Charles Schwab Challenge.
The 30-year-old did have the clubhouse lead at one stage on Sunday in Fort Worth. However, he ultimately finished one shot adrift of joining Russell Henley and Eric Cole in the playoff.
And Griffin does not appear to be at all surprised by his recent improvement. Speaking to the media after Sunday’s final round, he suggested that he has taken inspiration from Tiger Woods as he looks to get the most out of his game.
Advertisement
“Yeah, I love this time of the year. If you look at my entire seasons on tour or all my, I guess, my career on the PGA Tour, it’s kind of been like this,” he said.
“I haven’t played as great to start the year on the west coast. I’ll probably always have that a little bit. I’m sure I could win AmEx or Waste Management, Farmers, I never play well at Torrey Pines, I’ll have to get over that hump a little bit.
“But golfers we kind of when we pick our schedules we kind of ask ourselves, if I have my C game a week like here versus my C game a week like Torrey, what’s my finish going to be. My C game here could still be a top-10 finish. Whereas, a C game at Torrey Pines is almost always going to be a missed cut for me. So there’s courses like that when I build my schedule that, because I played on tour for a few years now, been able to kind of tell where I play well and where I don’t and build my schedule around that.
Advertisement
“Tiger used to always do it, some of the best players in the game have always done it that way. And, yeah, this time of the year I just, I play well, so I try to play a bunch. That’s why I played a bunch last year. After I won Zurich I just kept riding it and was playing well in the majors and I’m going to keep kind of doing the same thing.”
Griffin is arguably one of the names to look out for this week at the Memorial Tournament. He finished second to Scottie Scheffler at Muirfield Village last year. So his return to form could hardly come at a better time.
Interestingly, it appears that he could demand even more from his game.
Advertisement
Griffin was asked to grade his week as he waited to see whether he had done enough to make a playoff or even win the Charles Schwab Challenge in regulation.
“Today was definitely a pretty close to A with the exception of one hole. Just got out of my rhythm and game plan a little bit on 11. But other than that I hit some really high quality shots,” he said.
“The rest of the week was, I would say, B to C. But like we’re hard on ourselves. As golfers, it’s hard for me to actually grade myself. For all I know, I could win this golf tournament and like here I am saying I had my B or C game it’s like, well, if I won, I mean, I guess we can go to A.
“But I don’t know, golfers are so hard, we’re almost perfectionists out there. And I feel like golf’s one of those sports you just got to, you’re going to have bad moments and you just got to let them go and move forward and got to stay positive. I felt like I did a really good job of staying positive today.”
Advertisement
Griffin has proven that he can compete with the world’s best over the last 12 months. And he certainly does not lack self-belief.
So he will definitely have his sights set on a fourth career victory in the near future. There are some big prizes up for grabs over the next few weeks.
