CHARLOTTE — The coronation of Scottie Scheffler had taken an unexpected detour, mostly through the dense rough left of Quail Hollow’s front-nine fairways. The romp to his third major championship had veered into a tussle with Jon Rahm and a suddenly defective swing. A metronomic player briefly had gone haywire.
As Scheffler stood on the 18th tee, though, he had wrestled the 107th PGA Championship back into a stranglehold. Before Sunday, Scheffler had proved himself championship-caliber through majestic ball-striking and unfailing consistency. His third major title revealed something else: the summoning of fierce competitive will when faced with collapse.
On Sunday afternoon, Scheffler further cemented himself as an all-time player at the peak of his considerable powers. It was not as easy as the final score suggested. Scheffler seized his third major — and the second leg of the career Grand Slam — with an incomparable back nine that finalized his score at 11 under par, five shots clear of Harris English, Davis Riley and Bryson DeChambeau after Rahm melted down on the final three holes.
One major after Rory McIlroy completed the career Grand Slam at the Masters, Scheffler reasserted himself as the best golfer in the world. He proved he can dominate even when he courts disaster.
The three-shot lead he carried into the final round dissipated to nothing before he reached the 10th tee, 2 over on the round and wayward with nearly every full shot. Scheffler erased his disordered front nine and stiff-armed Rahm’s fleeting charge by shooting a 34 on the back, giving him a final round of even-par 70 and an abundant cushion as he played the so-called Green Mile three-hole finish.
Scheffler is suddenly in position to make a run at a historic summer. He missed the first month of the season after he suffered a puncture wound to his hand while — this is true — cutting pasta dough with an upturned wine glass to make ravioli. He struggled to find his best form. And yet, his PGA Tour finishes this season: ninth, 25th, third, 11th, 20th, second, fourth, eighth, win, win.
Scheffler has won his past two tournaments by eight and five strokes; the only other player since 1970 to win consecutive starts by at least five strokes is Tiger Woods. He has played his past eight rounds in 42 under. His torrid streak only needs to last another month before he enters as the favorite for the U.S. Open at Oakmont, a brawny course that will narrow the credible list of potential winners. It’s eminently conceivable that Scheffler could play for the career Grand Slam by the time he tees off at the British Open at Royal Portrush this summer.
At the outset Sunday, Scheffler appeared poised to run away. He slammed the door in both of his Masters victories when he played in the final group. He entered with a 69.79 final round scoring average in majors, second all-time among golfers with at least 10 rounds. His ball-striking had elevated him above the field, and his once-shaky putter had heated up. Even peers who play this capricious game for a living considered Scheffler’s crowning a near formality.
“He’s in a spot where it would be shocking if he didn’t win today,” Xander Schauffele, last year’s PGA Championship winner, said early Sunday afternoon.
“The way he hits the golf ball and how few mistakes he makes, it’s going to be really difficult for anyone to catch him,” Sam Burns, Scheffler’s best friend and housemate for the week, said after his round. “Someone is going to have to go out and do something miraculous.”
It wasn’t a miracle that injected drama into Quail Hollow. It was Scheffler’s sudden case of the lefts. After he spent Saturday pounding 13 of 14 fairways, he hit just 2 of 7 on the front nine, living in the left rough. He turned one wayward drive into a birdie with a feathery wedge out of pine straw but mostly struggled to save stressful pars. He bogeyed the first hole from the middle of the fairway after yanking his approach into the left bunker.
Given an opening no one expected, only Rahm, who started Sunday five back, emerged to challenge Scheffler. He birdied Nos. 8 and 10, moving to 8 under and separating from the cluster behind Scheffler.
As Rahm charged, Scheffler’s driver continued to betray him. Another leftward drive on No. 9 left him in the rough behind a tree. He wedged a layup over it, leaving himself a 61-yard up-and-down to keep Rahm two shots away. His wedge didn’t spin enough and trickled all the way to the back fringe.
When Scheffler missed the long par save, Rahn pulled within one. The Spaniard then made one of two 3s all day on the par-4 11th, smashing a fairway bunker shot to 15 feet, curling in the birdie putt and punctuating it with a fist pump. In less than an hour, Rahm’s brilliance and Scheffler’s shoddiness had conspired to turn a four-shot spread into a brand new tournament.
Scheffler provided one clue about how he would respond: The look on his face never changed. He marched to the 10th tee with his head up, steely eyes forward.
In a tailspin, with one of the world’s best players breathing down his neck, Scheffler responded. He blasted a drive into the 10th fairway, resetting his swing on the fly. Moments after Rahm missed a short birdie putt on No. 12, Scheffler poured in his nine-foot birdie putt to reclaim the lead at 10 under.
Like that, Scheffler was himself again. He hit the next three greens in regulation, converting a string of easy pars. As Scheffler stabilized, Rahm’s charge halted. He squandered two prime chances to get up-and-down for birdie on the drivable par-4 14th and the par-5 15th, missing two putts inside 13 feet after middling shots around the green.
When Scheffler converted an up-and-down from the same bunker Rahm could not on No. 14, he crept back to even for the round. Rahm’s bogey a few minutes on the brutish 16th swelled Scheffler’s lead back to three, right where it had stood when the day began. Rahm rinsed his tee ball on No. 17 on the way to a double bogey, added another double on No. 18 and ended up at 4 under, tied for eighth.
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