Maybe only Scottie Scheffler could burn a five shot lead and win a Major by the same amount of strokes, carrying on as if nothing had happened. For a couple of hours in the final round of the US PGA Championship the number one player in the world looked vulnerable and threatened, but none of the alarms turned into an emergency. He stared down the field. He outlasted everyone.
It was another display of stunning dominance. When Scheffler carried a three-shot lead into Sunday, nobody expected him to lose, but he started the back nine all-square with Jon Rahm and by then Scheffler was fighting with his game, especially off the tee.
On the back nine, though, it was as if he managed a reboot just by turning the computer on and off. Whatever in-game corrections he needed to make to his swing were executed with a gun to his head. There was no time to lose.
Once he was back in the groove nobody could stay with him. All around, players were dropping away on the back nine. Scheffler picked up shots on 10, 14 and 15, where birdies had been available all week, and by the time he bogeyed the 18th he was so far clear it was immaterial.
He claimed the third Major of his career with a level par round of 71, which left him five shots clear of Bryson DeChambeau, Harris English and Davis Riley; English and Riley simply picked up the pieces when others fell away.
Early in his round Scheffler was unusually clumsy, or unsettled. He kept losing his tee shots left and having missed just one fairway on Saturday, he hit just one fairway in the opening nine on Sunday.
It didn’t seem to matter for a while. Even when he carded his second bogey of the day on the sixth, his lead was four shots, one more than it had been at the start. But as he kept losing blood, others smelt it.
Rahm made a charge but ultimately couldn’t sustain it. After three birdies in four holes around the turn he briefly drew level with Scheffler at the top of the leaderboard at nine under par. But he lipped out for birdie on the 13th and failed to take advantage of the next two holes, the realistic birdie holes on the back nine.
Once he stopped climbing, Rahm fell helplessly down the mountain. A bogey on 16 was followed by a double-bogey on the treacherous 17th, where his tee shot careered into the lake, and another on the 18th, where he put his drive into the creek. In the space of little more than an hour he had gone from the top of the leaderboard to nowhere. He signed for a 72, having played the last three holes in a destructive five over.
Nobody else came out of the pack. At one stage, early in the final round, there were eight players tied for second place, but apart from Rahm, only DeChambeau and to a lesser extent Matt Fitzpatrick made any concerted attempt to bridge the gap.
Fitzpatrick chipped in for an eagle at the 14th, but missed for birdie at the next, and finished with three successive bogeys. DeChambeau’s round was a microcosm of his week. His driving was so good that he should have had a world of birdies, but his iron play was poor, just as it had been in the last round at Augusta. Afterwards he said he was “baffled” by elements of his game. He wasn’t alone.
Driver testing was one of the sub-plots of the week and after his final round Xander Schauffele stirred the pot. It was widely reported that Rory McIlroy was forced to change his driver on Tuesday after it was found to be “non-conforming.” McIlroy refused to speak to the media after each of his four rounds so he didn’t face any questions on the subject.
The story was originally broken by SiriusXM PGA Tour radio on Friday and McIlroy’s management team didn’t respond to requests for a comment from Golf Digest, among others. However, on Saturday afternoon the PGA of America issued a statement confirming that about a third of the field had been subject to random testing, which, they said was a regular occurrence on tour. They were also at pains to point out that “non-confirming” drivers were not an attempt by any player to gain an advantage.
“Finding driver heads that have crept over the line of conformance is not an unusual occurrence, especially for clubs that are hit thousands of times over a long period of time,” read the statement from the chief championships officer Kerry Haigh.
“The results are kept confidential to protect players, who are unaware the club has fallen out of conformance and not responsible for it falling out of conformance other than hitting the club thousands of times. Players are simply asked to change heads if necessary, and all do without issue. To publicly identify players whose club did not conform can lead to that player being questioned unnecessarily. Neither the USGA nor the PGA of America have any concerns about player intent.”
It is understood that McIlroy took exception to news of his driver test leaking out, and this may have influenced his decision not to engage with the media. In his post-round interview with Golfweek, however, Schauffele indicated that Scheffler was also forced to change his driver head at the beginning of the week, a story which hadn’t been reported.
“Scott is winning the tournament, and I think he switched to his back up [driver] too,” he said.
Schauffele was infuriated when he was forced to change his driver at the 2019 British Open. His argument then, which he repeated after his final round at Quail Hollow, was that every player’s driver should come under scrutiny on the weeks when driver testing is taking place.
McIlroy’s thoughts on the issue will be interesting when he lifts his self-imposed silence.
