Scottie Scheffler has had quite the week already at the PGA Championship, and on Saturday, it might finally be catching up with him.
Making his first start in three weeks after his wife, Meredith, gave birth to the couple’s first child, Bennett, last week, Scheffler was arrested by the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department early Friday morning before his second round tee time. He remarkably was released and made it back to Valhalla Golf Club in time to fire a second-round 66, but he did not have the same competitive juice Saturday.
After opening with par, the World No. 1 drove into the fairway bunker on the 2nd hole and then pulled his approach left of the green in a penalty area. His ball was playable, but he shockingly duffed his first pitch shot from the heavy grass short of the green.
From there, he sent his fourth shot flying past the hole and then two-putted the 40-footer for a disastrous double bogey.
He then three-putted the par-3 3rd and drove into another penalty area at 4, where he took a penalty drop, duffed another flop shot, but got up and down for another bogey.
Scheffler has been putting together one of the best PGA Tour seasons in the past two decades, but the streak that he just ended is just something that’s hard for anyone who plays golf regularly to understand.
Scheffler’s double-bogey-bogey run on holes 2 through 4 was his first stretch of three bogeys or worse in a row in nearly two years. The last time he did that was when he made bogey-bogey-double on holes 12 through 14 during the first round of the 2022 FedEx St. Jude Championship. Scheffler missed the cut that August week in Memphis.
According to stat guru Justin Ray, Scheffler went 646 days and played 2,470 official PGA Tour holes between three straight bogey stretches.
Scheffler is without the services of regular caddie Ted Scott for Saturday’s third round. As was arranged before the event, Scott flew home to Louisiana Friday night to attend his daughter’s high school graduation and will return for the final round by Sunday morning. Scheffler’s close friend and PGA Tour Chaplain Brad Payne is on the bag for the third round.
But, one commonality between Scheffler’s two most recent three-straight bogey runs, he ended them by birdieing the following hole.
In Memphis, Scheffler birdied the 15th to stop his slide. Saturday in Louisville, he split the fairway at the dogleg right par-4 5th, wedged it to 15 feet and made the putt. He also added another birdie at the par-5 7th to get him back to two over for the day, but he was then five shots behind co-leaders Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele.
Scheffler ended up birdieing the 18th hole to post a two-over 73, his first over-par round of the season on the PGA Tour. He was 11 rounds short of Tiger Woods’ PGA Tour record of 52 straight rounds of par or better. His front nine of three-over 38 was just his third over-par nine of the year too.
