TROON, Scotland — The first stage of Scottie Scheffler’s rise to the top of his sport seemed like warp speed.

In the span of five tournaments as winter turned to spring in 2022, Scheffler went from No. 15 in the Official World Golf Ranking to No. 1, and that was before the 6-foot-3 Texan won the Masters for the first time.

Now he’s on a level not seen since Tiger Woods was in his prime.

The British Open starts Thursday at Royal Troon, but Scheffler is not the biggest draw in the field — not with 15-time major champion Woods among the 158 players competing.

Rory McIlroy remains a big attraction, especially in the United Kingdom, and the 35-year-old from Northern Ireland is a sentimental favorite this week after his late collapse in last month’s U.S. Open. Bryson DeChambeau’s one-stroke win kept McIlroy stuck at four career major championships, the last of those won a decade ago.

Still, any conversation about contenders at the final major of the year starts with Scheffler, a heavy favorite. That’s been true in every major this year, and it has taken him time to fully appreciate his status in the game.

“I never really thought of myself as anything but a golfer,” said Scheffler, who won the Masters for the second time in April, tied for eighth at the PGA Championship in May and has turned 28 since sharing 41st place at the U.S. Open.

“I was never trying to be famous,” he continued. “I didn’t want to be a celebrity or whatever. I just wanted to become a good golfer and get the most out of myself. It’s brought me this far, so I continue to just try to keep my head down and put in the work that got me here, and just continue to practice and hopefully continue to get better.”

His six PGA Tour victories before the calendar turned to July are the most since Arnold Palmer in 1962. Palmer’s seventh victory that year was the claret jug he won at Royal Troon for his sixth of seven career major championships.

The British Open figures to be the biggest test for Scheffler, who is still relatively new to links golf — everything about his rise to No. 1 is new, of course — having played this style of the sport in 2021 for the first time. He has learned to adjust the flight of his ball, because links turf creates a little more spin on certain shots. The greens can be slower. Bunkers, dangerously deep, are to be avoided at all costs.

In addition to twice putting on the green jacket as a newly crowned champion at Augusta National, he has been a runner-up in both the U.S. Open (2022) and the PGA Championship (2023), but his three British Open finishes to date are ties for eighth at Royal St. George’s in 2021, 21st at St. Andrews in 2022 and 23rd at Royal Liverpool a year ago.

Even so, the love of the links is there.

He went to the J.P. McManus Pro-Am in Ireland a few years ago and took side trips to Lahinch and Ballybunion. He began this trip across the Atlantic Ocean by skipping the Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club — links style, but not links turf — and instead going to Turnberry with Sam Burns for a match with their caddies, both good players.

“A tremendous amount of fun,” he said.

And then it was time for work at Royal Troon, the links renowned for having the longest hole (the 623-yard sixth) and shortest hole (the 123-yard eighth) in the British Open rotation.

Most peculiar about Troon is that the outward nine — typically with at least a wee breeze at the players’ back — has two par-5 holes and measures 3,539 yards. The inward nine with the wind in the face has one par 5 and is 3,846 yards.

“It’s basically a tale of two nines on this course,” McIlroy said. “You feel like you have to make your score on the way out and then sort of hang on coming in.”

McIlroy has far more experience in links golf — and a claret jug to show for it from his victory at Royal Liverpool in 2014 — but it still takes time to adjust because “you play 11 months of your golf every year in very different conditions.”

Players also are preparing for weather described as “mixed,” a gentle way of saying it probably won’t be terribly pleasant for most of the tournament. Sunshine gave way to spells of rain on Tuesday, and that was before lunch was served.

Xander Schauffele, who won the PGA Championship in May, might currently be the second-most consistent player in golf behind Scheffler, having finished in the top 20 in each of his past 10 starts and having made 51 consecutive cuts. He has also acquired a taste for less than pleasant conditions, particularly in the British Open.

“If the weather gets really bad, you just have to take the bunkers out of play and really try and plot your way around,” the 30-year-old American said. “It doesn’t have to be super pretty. Just kind of place the ball around the property and really just try and get it in the hole in as few shots as possible.”

That’s what Scheffler has been doing all year. He won The Players Championship — the PGA Tour’s flagship event — in March before taking the Masters the following month, and his other four wins were in the tour’s signature events against the strongest fields. He has done so on courses long and short, in conditions dry and soft.

With that has come a level of notoriety he wasn’t expecting but has come to appreciate.

“Being out here playing in front of great crowds and having them scream your name and holler when you make putts and be truly rooting for you is a great feeling,” he said. “It’s one of the very special perks we have out here.”