Four hours before the eventual winner, Bryson DeChambeau, sets off on the final lap of the US OpenScottie Scheffler stood on the first green of a Pinehurst No. 2 course that had clouded his confidence for three excruciating days, carefully lining up a 20-foot birdie shot.
The world’s No. 1 golfer managed to putt with perfect speed and line all the way to the cup, where he stopped on the left edge without falling. Scheffler stared in disbelief for a moment before stepping forward to score par. It would have been hard to imagine a better example of how the golfer managed to putt. two-time major champion the week has passed.
The faint chimes from the nearby village chapel that echoed across the course during Scheffler’s two-over-par 72 Sunday morning — which left him eight over par for the championship and 14 shots behind DeChambeau’s winning total — could have sounded like a dirge for the Masters champion. He had arrived here as the biggest betting favourite entering a major tournament in 15 yearshaving won for the fifth time in eight starts the previous Sunday at the Memorial. He had already broken the tour’s annual earnings record with more than $24 million (£18.96 million) in prize money – a fine piece of work if you can get it – and left Thursday as the first player to win five tournaments in a season before the US Open since Tom Watson in 1980.
The 27-year-old left the course Sunday outside the top 10 for the first time in nearly six months, lamenting one missed opportunity after another on the turtle-shaped greens. There was certainly no shame in Scheffler’s scores (71-74-71-72). But for a player known for his almost astonishing consistency — whose bad golf is still very good golf — it was an astonishing week. For the first time in his six-year professional career spanning 120 tournaments, he went four consecutive rounds without dropping under par.
It took a course built in the first decade of the last century to handle what the world’s best golfers, and even Louisville Metropolitan Police Departmentfailed to bring Scheffler’s enchanting season to an abrupt end. The tour’s birdie-average leader entered Sunday’s final round ranked 73rd out of 74 players still in the field, seemingly unable to read the lightning-fast, saucer-shaped Bermuda greens that are Pinehurst No. 2’s best defense. If it were revealed Monday that they had been seeded with kryptonite, no one would be surprised.
The easygoing Texan moves at such an even pace that his experience here is unlikely to leave significant scars. Even his pre-dawn arrest last month outside the gates of the U.S. PGA Championship – where he stretched out in a jail cell, made it to his second-round tee time and finished tied for eighth – couldn’t interrupt what has been a bloodbath.
But Scheffler admitted after his round here on Saturday that he would reconsider his schedule ahead of the majors, suggesting that playing in the Jack Nicklaus-hosted tournament at Muirfield Village the previous week may have compromised his mental fitness for what is billed as professional golf’s toughest test.
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Scheffler said: “I think in terms of preparing for a week that’s going to be as tough as this one, I think I might not play the week before. I think going into the big championships, especially the ones that are going to be very tough, it might be in my best interest not to play the week before.” All eyes will be on Royal Troon and the Open Championship, which starts in a month.
