​SOUTHPORT, England — Scottie Scheffler finally heard about the text his PGA Tour friend never sent, a reminder that even the No. 1 player in golf with four majors and more than 20 victories doesn’t know everything.It was a list of things to do on the weekend after missing the cut.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisement“He was like: ‘Hey, you can practice at the facilities. You can still go to the gym. You can also go to the next tournament.’ It was basically all my options,” Scheffler said Tuesday. “He never sent it to me, but he told me about it.”The reason the text was created — without being sent, to Scheffler’s disappointment — was missing the cut at the Scottish Open, his first missed cut in nearly four years, a streak of 78 consecutive cuts that was the longest since Tiger Woods set the record (142) from 1998 to 2005.Frustrating, yes. Despair? Hardly.“You never want to have a weekend off, but going into a tournament when you’re defending, there’s always a bit more stuff to do,” Scheffler said. “So it wasn’t the world thing in the world.”AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementAmong his duties was officially returning the claret jug he won last year at Royal Portrush, a ritual the Royal & Ancient has turned into a ceremony. Then, it was playing an exhibition with Jordan Spieth, Tommy Fleetwood, Justin Rose and others.But key to Scheffler’s early arrival was Royal Birkdale, which has hosted the Open Championship more than any other links course in England since it first joined the rotation in 1954.He had never seen it. Scheffler had not seen conditions like this — a combination of yellow and brown, which translates to firm and fiery in a links vocabulary. St. Andrews came close in 2022, but Jon Rahm recalls the greens still being soft enough to allow for low scoring.Scheffler ticked off two items on his friend’s list — he went to the gym in Scotland and then headed to the next tournament. That allowed him time to play 18 holes on Sunday, and to limit his energy in sunbaked Blighty to nine holes on Monday and Tuesday.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHis general assessment: “The ball is just going to run forever.”Is it driver to take it over the bunkers and possibly reach the green on the 393-yard, downwind 16th hole, or hit iron off the tee? Is the redesigned fifth hole at 321 yards worth trying to reach with a pond to the right, a series of bunkers short and a wee part of a wee burn to the left?“On each hole there’s a good bit of strategy. There’s a decent amount of thinking,” Scheffler said. “If it wasn’t as firm as it is now, there would be as much decision-making. But I think with the firmness, it creates a whole lot more challenges.”Rose is among four players — and at 45, the youngest — to have played Royal Birkdale three times in the Open dating to 1998. He was a 17-year-old amateur that year, full of joy and optimism when he holed out a wedge for birdie on the 18