Scheffler delivers at 'Sleepy' Hollow
Three-time major winner was dominant in stretch; Rahm finds 'fun' in making a run
Scottie Scheffler was a masterful finisher in winning PGA Championship (Maddie Meyer/PGA of America)
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The sleepiest PGA Championship in recent memory rustled awake late Saturday afternoon at Quail Hollow Club and then again on Sunday. Both days, world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler smothered the life out of it.
With a closing kick befitting the best player in the world, Scheffler played the last five holes of his third round in 5-under par to turn a one-shot deficit into a three-shot lead that seemed much wider than that. For a man who has never blown a 54-hole lead — he came in 7-for-7 in closing them out including both his major wins at the Masters — it felt very much like a done deal.
“F@€& yeah, baby!” the typically stoic Scheffler shouted as he pumped his fist in a way he rarely ever does on a Sunday when his 9-footer for birdie on the brutal 18th hole dropped on Saturday evening.
The galleries packed around the finishing hole rose up in an extended chorus of “Scottie! Scottie! Scottie!” chants that let any players still on property know their hopes of securing the Wanamaker Trophy were gravely diminished. The “Rory! Rory! Rory!” chants didn’t start at Augusta last month until the playoff was over.
“He’s in a spot where it would be shocking if he doesn’t win today,” said Xander Schauffele after finishing Sunday an hour before Scheffler even started.
Well, the shocking was fully materializing when Scheffler made the turn in 2-over Sunday and Jon Rahm erased a five-shot deficit to draw even through 11 holes. It was then that Rahm missed four consecutive looks at birdie before imploding while Scheffler raced back out to six shots ahead before winning by five.
“This back nine will be one that I remember for a long time,” Scheffler said. “It was a grind out there. I think at one point on the front I maybe had a four- or five-shot lead, and making the turn, I think I was tied for the lead. So to step up when I needed to the most, I’ll remember that for a while.”
This week always felt like “PGA: Endgame” since the opening round, with Scheffler playing the role of Thanos from Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame.” Scheffler seemed “inevitable” since he fashioned a day-one 69 despite a mud-ball induced double on the 16th hole.
Officially, Scheffler was tied 20th after one round, but anyone glancing at the star-deprived leaderboard above him knew Scheffler was the man to beat with reigning Masters champ Rory McIlroy shooting 74 and Schauffele, the defending PGA champion, 72.
By Saturday morning, the leaderboard more resembled a Texas Open than a major championship, with Scheffler (at T5) the lone OWGR top-10 player among the top 47 entering the weekend. Of the top 16 leaders at the midpoint, only two ranked among the top 45 in the world (Robert MacIntyre at No. 22 was the other). The average world ranking of the other 14 leaders was 80.9.
It was from there that the PGA finally came alive. Crowds flocked to Quail Hollow on Saturday and the first vibration of energy seemed to conjure a little magic in the biggest names still on site and within a shout of contention
Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau — LIV Golf’s two biggest stars — started making serious noise to break through the clutter of no-names. At one point on the back nine Saturday, Scheffler, DeChambeau and Rahm were all tied for the PGA Championship lead at 7-under par — tantalizing with the promise that for first time in history a trio of multiple-major winners could share the top rung on a major championship leaderboard and loaded for a Sunday shootout.
This PGA was going from a dud to a certifiable classic.
And then — SNAP — it seemed over. Rahm gave back a stroke on 17 but figured he was still right there when he walked off the course still tied with Scheffler on 6-under at that moment. DeChambeau started making bad shots on the Green Mile and started blaming everything but his own misjudgment on the three strokes he coughed up down the stretch that turned his brief lead into an eventual six-shot deficit.
That’s when Scheffler started gathering infinity stones down the stretch and snapped his fingers to eliminate all notable threats. From his tap-in eagle on the drivable 14th to his stroke-stealing birdie from a fairway divot on 18, he was superlative. The only hole he parred coming home was the 16th, where he delivered probably his best approach of the day to 12 feet and got fooled like everyone else by the uphill breaking putt.
It was an absolute masterclass in how to seize control of a tournament. Left standing with him in the final two pairings were three players — Alex Noren, Davis Riley and J.T. Poston — oddsmakers would be willing to offer long odds to catch the man who’s never lost a 54-hole lead.
With the chants of his name still ringing in his ears, Scheffler had to remind himself Saturday night that he still has a job to finish on Sunday. This isn’t LIV Golf, after all.
“These tournaments are very important to us, and you work your whole life to have a chance to win major tournaments, any tournament for that matter, and tomorrow I have a good opportunity to go out there and try and win the golf tournament,” he said. “But it’s going to take another really good round. There’s a lot of great players chasing me on the leaderboard and someone is going to put up a great round and it’s up to me to go out there and have another really good round and finish off the tournament.”
Scottie Scheffler adds the Wanamaker Trophy to his two green jackets. (Maddie Meyer/PGA of America)
Scheffler can’t control what anybody else does, however, and sure enough Rahm made his move. With birdies at 8, 10 and 11 on Sunday, Rahm grabbed a share of the lead and looked poise to win his third major title and head to Royal Portrush later this summer with a chance to complete his own career slam.
But Rahm narrowly missed birdies at 12 and 13 and poorly missed shorter birdie chances at the must-birdie 14 and 15. Scheffler found his swing and did not miss his birdie opps at 10, 14 and 15, forcing Rahm to take chances on the Green Mile that proved devastating in a bogey-double-double finish.
“It was really close. God, it’s been a while since I had that much fun on a golf course,” said Rahm.
“Yeah, the last three holes, it’s a tough pill to swallow right now. … A lot of positive to take from this week. Pretty fresh wound right now. But there’s been a lot of good happening this week and a lot of positive feelings to take for the rest of the year.”
Scheffler ended up cruising after all to a five-shot victory over DeChambeau, Harris English and Riley.
“I always try to lean as much as I can on my mind; I think that’s probably my greatest strength,” Scheffler said. “You know, like today and this week I really just feel like I did just such a good job of staying patient when I wasn’t swinging it my best but I hit the shots when I needed to. I hit the important shots well this week, and that’s why I’m walking away with the trophy.”
Jon Rahm’s finish was ‘tough pill to swallow,’ but his performance was uplifting (Scott Taetsch/PGA of America)
Rahm left ‘hungry’ after major tease
CHARLOTTE, N.C. — For a guy who played his last three holes in 5-over par, who went from tied for the lead to finishing seven strokes back, Jon Rahm was remarkably poised and reflective in the immediate aftermath of the PGA Championship.
Rahm began the day in fifth, five strokes behind Scottie Scheffler, and ended up tying for eighth — which if you didn’t follow any of the action or see how things transpired would probably look routine.
But it was far from that on what turned out to be a tense — for a time — battle at Quail Hollow, where Rahm actually tied Scheffler for the lead through 11 holes with consecutive birdies only to fail to make another one the rest of the way.
“If there’s ever somebody that’s sitting right here that tells you nerves weren’t a part of it, they’re clearly lying,” Rahm said. “It’s the main thing we do as a professional sport; it’s controlling what goes through your mind.”
Rahm, who won the 2021 U.S. Open and the 2023 Masters, spent part of Saturday pushing back on the narrative that his move to LIV Golf was part of the problem in his lack of major championship success since.
After his surprising and controversial departure from the PGA Tour in December of 2023 for nine figures, Rahm did not find the going very good in the majors. He tied for 45th last year in his Masters defense. He missed the cut at the PGA Championship. He didn’t even play the U.S. Open due to a foot infection. Then he tied for seventh at the Open, never really in contention at the tournament won by Xander Schauffele.
A tie for 14th at the Masters last month was certainly no shame, but Rahm was never on the final-day leaderboard with a chance to contend against Rory McIlroy.
That’s why this week’s performance at the PGA was so big, even if the result was far from what Rahm wanted.
“It’s a tough pill to swallow right now,” Rahm said afterward.
“God, it’s been awhile since I had that much fun on a golf course.”
He explained that his issues were swing related, not LIV related. He noted that some of those issues had begun to creep into his game after winning the Masters and well before jumping to the rival league.
And some of those flaws crept in at times during the PGA Championship here.
“It’s a couple of things,” he said. “I think it’s linked to some of the things I’ve been working on in the swing. It was the trend today, right. The tee shots on 3, 5, 7 and then 16. They are not bad swings. It’s just a ball that starts left, and it’s not quite cutting.
“In fact, I would say 5, 7 and 16, if it’s zero wind, all the three balls are in the fairway. But with the wind being off the right, it’s not a swing that I can afford to make, right. So it’s kind of what happened there.”
Rahm had not made a bogey through 11 holes and was tied for the lead at 9-under. Scheffler went ahead of him with a birdie at the 10th but Rahm was still in with a good shot to tie him with a birdie putt that lipped out at the 13th.
“You know what position you’re in because, even if you don’t want to look at leaderboards, the crowd lets you know,” Rahm said. “They’re so excited, it doesn’t matter, they’ll tell you. Even when you don’t know exactly what’s going on on a hole, if you hear a cheer, you do know what’s going on.
“Like on 12 green when I hit my putt, at the same time I heard a cheer from 10. I was fully aware that was a Scottie birdie. I just could tell, you’re there enough times.
“Even then, even if I was one back, I knew that if I finished the five holes under par, I was going to give myself a really good run to possibly win it and maybe go into a playoff.”
At the drivable par-4 14th, Rahm hit a 5-wood that he believed was drawing perfectly but hit a slope on the front right corner of the green and bounded right into the bunker.
“To be fair, that might have been the best swing of the week,” Rahm said. “For a guy who can’t hit draws, to hit a draw with a 5-wood that well in that moment. … Where I ended up in the bunker, if A-plus is on the green, that’s position A. That’s about as easy an up-and-down as you’re going to have.”
But Rahm couldn’t convert the birdie there, pushing a 7-footer, nor on the reachable par-5 15th where he was behind the green in two shots but hit an approach putt too hard and failed to make the birdie from 12 feet.
“If there’s ever a time where it felt like it was slipping away to an extent, it was not birdieing 14 and 15,” he said. “That was definitely the mistake — before, obviously finishing poorly.”
Rahm was still just a shot behind at this point but it was clear that he needed to make something happen. Scheffler was playing those birdie holes behind him and converted both. Instead, Rahm played the last three holes in 5-over par to shoot 73.
He bogeyed the 16th, hit his tee shot in the water at the par-3 17th and again in the creek at the 18th.
“I think it’s the first time I’ve been in position to win a major that close and haven’t done it,” Rahm said. “The only times I think I’ve been in the lead in a major on a Sunday, I’ve been able to close it out, and this is a very different situation.
“I always like to go back a little bit on something that (NBA Hall of Famer and TV analyst) Charles Barkley likes to remind basketball players all the time. Like, I play golf for a living. It’s incredible. Am I embarrassed a little bit about how I finished today? Yeah. But I just need to get over it, get over myself. It’s not the end of the world. It’s not like I’m a doctor or a first responder, where somebody if they have a bad day, truly bad things happen.
“I’ll get over it. I’ll move on. Again, there’s a lot more positive than negative to think about this week. I’m really happy I put myself in position and hopefully learn from this and give it another go in the U.S. Open.
“It is hard to express how hungry I may be for a major — about as hungry as anybody can be in this situation.”