Scottie Scheffler (-11) has won the 107th edition of the PGA Championship with a final round at par (71) and experiencing far more difficulties than the final five-shot difference with the runners-up, Harris English (-6), Davis Riley (-6), and Bryson DeChambeau (-6), suggests. Just past the halfway point of the round, he lost his entire lead and tied with Jon Rahm (-4) for the lead, but this guy is a World Number One with all the extras as standard, so at his worst, when he was a victim of his own mistakes, he straightened his swing, wiped away the cold sweat with a swipe, and ended up winning by a landslide. He now has three Majors. We’ll see how many he finishes with by the end of 2025…
Very soon, to the great surprise of both insiders and outsiders, it was clear that the Texan’s swing was not in place. Scheffler repeatedly lined up to hit that precise fade, his trademark, but all the balls, one after another (except on the tee shot at hole 1), went straight and ended up to the left of the target. This led to a bogey on hole 1 (he missed the second shot as described, sending the ball into a bunker), and on 6, and on 9, in addition to some other difficulties that he managed to resolve as best he could. It is true that none of his closest rivals, initially, even managed to reduce the deficit, but when Jon Rahm finally got the machinery going (birdies on holes 8, 10, and 11 after making seven pars), the scenario changed radically. A fast-paced PGA had begun, which, it seemed, was going to be contested by the American and the Spaniard (DeChambeau only threatened to get into the fight)…
It was then, when truly challenged, that Scheffler regained his proverbial consistency. This was the case from hole 10 onwards. A capability only within reach of the truly chosen ones. Rahm, already tied at the top of the leaderboard, had a killer card up his sleeve to play in these types of situations, that of going ahead setting the pace with those holes 14 and 15 ahead, one of the few friendly stretches of Quail Hollow. If the man from Barrika got the ‘pertinent’ birdies there, Scottie could find the slope very steep. However, the opposite was going to happen: Jon made two pars and then immediately signed a crushing bogey at the start of the Green Mile, hole 16, leaving the way clear for the World Number One, who was already aware of the Spaniard’s slip before chaining, with the manual in hand, the two birdies on the aforementioned holes 14 and 15.
End of story.
Ladies and gentlemen: Scottie Scheffler has just won his third Major. The first was that 2022 Masters, which he closed with an uncontestable three-shot lead despite finishing with a double bogey on the 72nd hole of the tournament, the 18th at Augusta National. The second, again the Masters, in 2024, which he took with a comfortable four-shot lead. The third, this 2025 PGA at a superb course like Quail Hollow, which has dignified the event, he took with a five-shot lead… As can be well understood, such sufficiency is no coincidence, it cannot be the result of chance that this guy is capable of pulling away from the best in the world so frequently in the most important events of the year. He is a legendary player. An unrepentant maker of outstanding shots. A predator.
