Scottie Scheffler (-7) had practically lost all his chances on Friday to secure his third victory of the year at the Charles Schwab Challenge, after a very unfortunate second round, especially with the putter. Today, once the third round is over, perhaps the option of an epic comeback by the World Number One can be considered…
On Friday, he finished ten shots behind the leaders, Matti Schmid (-13) and Ben Griffin (-13), and today he is six behind these same two players, who have remained at the top with rounds of 69, two under par for the day. Scheffler, for his part, had already posted the best score of the day (64) three and a half hours before Schmid and Griffin finished the third round, climbing more than forty positions on the leaderboard and placing himself within the tournament’s top ten (tomorrow he starts in seventh position, just two shots off third place). The option is remote, agreed. But it exists.
Scheffler had it very easy to let go. To relax and take a leisurely Saturday stroll around the legendary Colonial Country Club course. More important weeks will come, he might have thought after suffering Friday’s setback. Not least, the upcoming week at the Memorial, a Signature Event where he also defends his title at Jack Nicklaus’s house. But this guy’s competitive gene doesn’t understand compromises. As long as he’s on the course, Scheffler’s nature is to strike, to push. Better to finish eighth than ninth. Better twenty-second than twenty-third.
Let’s see. Schmid and Griffin start this Sunday with a more than interesting advantage. Four shots over Rickie Fowler (-9), five over MacIntyre, Hardy, and Bhatia, all at -8, and the aforementioned six shots over Scheffler, Novak, and Kitayama. They should be the ones contending for the victory. And it won’t be for lack of trying. Few have attempted more this year than the German and the North Carolinian. Griffin’s case, in fact, is quite something. We are in the twentieth week of 2025, and he is playing his eighteenth tournament of the current year…
Griffin, indeed, played up to thirteen consecutive tournaments, in consecutive weeks, from January to March; then he took a small break and has now strung together another five weeks of competition. However, he already managed to open his winning record on the PGA Tour at the end of April at the Zurich Classic, alongside Andrew Novak. But winning a pairs tournament is not the same as doing it solo. Not by a long shot. Griffin, 29, aims to establish himself in the world’s top 50, like so many extraordinary golfers, but he is in the best moment of his career (coming off a notable top ten at last week’s PGA, he was eighth, the first of his career in a Major) and it’s not a matter of letting these kinds of opportunities slip away, like the one he has created for himself this week in Fort Worth.
Schmid isn’t far behind either, playing his seventeenth tournament of the year, just one less than Griffin. The German has another incentive tomorrow, besides making his debut as a winner on the PGA Tour: if he wins, he will appear in the hot zone of the European Ryder Cup standings, a goal he didn’t have in mind at the beginning of the year, to be honest.
Joking aside, this question arises for the World Number One: Scottie, can’t you leave even a slice of the pie for guys like these, like Ben and Matti, who so deserve it, if only for sheer persistence? And no, Scheffler cannot. As it should be.
