Perhaps more than any week on the PGA Tour schedule, Bay Hill delights in kicking your teeth in.
And on a remarkable Saturday afternoon at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Scottie Scheffler wasted no time in getting started.
The World No. 1 began an unsettling third round at Bay Hill in particularly unusual fashion, recording three bogeys in his first five holes – and four in his first seven – to slip from the fringes of the leaderboard to fall out of contention. As he has done for most of the week in Florida, the usually cool and collected Scheffler looked out of character with a bat in hand and outside PATIENCE without it, en route to a top-down 72. As if to emphasize the point, when his fourth bogey of the day dropped on the seventh hole, NBC cameras caught Scheffler bouncing his ball into the woods in disgust. the second Frustrated ball throw of the week.
By the time he made the turn, Scheffler had recorded the most bogeys in a hole at nine in more than eleven months, since second round of the Masters last Apriland only one black point less than he recorded them all week at American Express in January. (Of course, another reading of these stats highlights Scheffler’s brilliance in the 2020s, seeing as until the Genesis Invitational in late February, the world No. 1 had gone 11 months without a finish outside the top 10.)
After it was over, Scheffler was open.
“Pretty much up and down, I’d say,” he said.
No joke. But the ups were also revealing. On a Saturday when Bay Hill threw a few punches, the 29-year-old answered with a few of his own. Just when it looked like he might disappear from the competition entirely, Scheffler recorded four straight birdies between holes 11 and 14, and then added a fifth on the par-5 16th. He entered the 18th hole needing a birdie to get to six under for the tournament, seven shots off the lead set by Daniel Berger and within striking distance of another charge on Sunday.
Instead, he swept his approach short to the right, watching helplessly as he bounced over a lakebed and plunged into the water. Scheffler folded in anger as the ball disappeared into the water. He adjusted from there, but the damage was done: A double in the last had ended the momentum he had fought so hard to regain. He finished the day at even par for the round, and 3 under for the tournament, 10 shots off the lead. set by Daniel Berger.
“The margins here are so small,” Scheffler said. “It felt like the holidays, when they go against you, you bogey, and when they go with you, sometimes you make birdies.”
On Saturday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the story for Scheffler was on the sidelines. And in a golf tournament known for its hype, the world No 1 admitted he left injured.
