The answer to the question is yes. Scottie Scheffler (-7) has paid the price this Saturday for the surreal and Kafkaesque day on Friday that ended with him in a jail in Louisville, a while before going out to play the second round. On Friday he held up like a champion, probably pushed by the adrenaline of the situation of being handcuffed, arrested and driven in a police car to the station for the first time in his life, while learning the tragic news of the death of a PGA Championship worker run over by a bus. It is confirmed that Scheffler is human and it was today when he had the downturn. He signed a round of 73 strokes, the sixth worst of the day in another birdie festival at Valhalla, and has practically lost all his chances of victory. He is eight strokes behind the lead shared by Xander Schauffele and Collin Morikawa with -15.
Scheffler has not felt well at any time. He has been failing, imprecise, bad from the tee, irregular with the irons and not very sharp with the putter. His start has been devastating. He started with a partial of four over par in the first four holes. The slope was uphill and in his gaze, his shoulders and his expression it was perceived that there was no energy to turn the situation around, with a head that was not one hundred percent where it should be. From there, he achieved a partial of two under par, with the infinite resources of a Number One, but the damage was already done on a day where you had to fly very low to give yourself a chance.
Thus, the extraordinary streak of consecutive rounds at par or under par that he has maintained since last year is broken. Specifically, since the fourth round of the Tour Championship in Atlanta, at the end of August. It has been, therefore, a whopping almost nine months without losing a single battle against the field and winning 99 percent of them. A beast. Practically, he had forgotten what it was like to play over par. If you count the Hero World Challenge, an unofficial PGA Tour tournament, but valid for the world ranking, it turns out that Scheffler has chained 46 rounds without playing over par. He is six short of the absolute record, held by Tiger Woods (52) since 2001.
Be that as it may and despite the bitterness of signing a bad round and practically being out of the fight for the PGA, Scheffler has again left a sensational gesture of humanity at the end of his round on the same 18th green. He finished with a smile and gave a heartfelt hug to Brad Payne, chaplain of the PGA Tour and improvised caddie this Saturday of the Number One in the world in the absence of Ted Scott, released by the boss to attend his daughter’s university graduation. It was a complicit hug, smiling, making it clear that if anyone is not to blame for what has happened in this third round it is precisely Payne. A great detail.
