PINEHURST, N.C. — It started with a simple question on a poor drive: Dude, what are you doing?
It progressed to a club flip, a visceral tossing of his putter five feet into the air and above his head. Scheffler’s par putt on 15, his sixth hole of the day, inexplicably broke left at the very final moment, and Scheffler launched his Spider Tour X in the air and turned in disgust without even an attempt to catch it. He let it just thump to the ground.
Advertisement
Soon he was talking to himself again. His tee shot into the par 3 17th went straight into the left-side bunker. “Maybe the worst golf shot I’ve ever seen you hit,” Scheffler told himself.
And this is all before he missed a birdie attempt on the second hole. He covered his face in sincere shock, walked to his bag by the next tee and slammed his putter in his bag so hard the special edition U.S. Open TaylorMade bag fell to the ground. Scheffler had to pick it up and frustratedly slam it back down.
So by the time the disaster hole arrived at Pinehurst’s fifth hole, by the time Scheffler’s greatest U.S. Open nightmare really appeared in the form of a double bogey, Scheffler was no longer angry. He was resigned to the reality that this was not his day. He had four more holes to get through. Four more holes to process his feelings on the likelihood he will not win his third major this week in North Carolina. He could sign his scorecard and talk to reporters in oddly good spirits, joking about his poor day and the ways Pinehurt’s native areas got the better of him. He did end up making the cut on the number but it would be hours before that was confirmed.
This is where you should stop and be reminded we saw a foreign sight Friday. We saw Scottie Scheffler — golf’s No. 1 player, a juggernaut winning five tournaments in eight weeks, a man who recently went 10 months between rounds over par — in danger of missing the cut after a Friday 74, putting him 5-over-par for the week. One might call it history.
It’s important to watch it closely. Not because it means anything going forward. Because it tells us so much about what makes him special.
Scheffler is good. Historically good. Yeah, he “only” has two major championships thus far, but aside from Tiger Woods, we haven’t seen a player at this high a level this consistently for a three-season stretch in decades. Scheffler won his first career PGA Tour event in February 2022. Since then, he’s won 10 more tournaments in two years and finished top 10 an astronomical 39 times. For reference, world No. 2 Xander Schauffele has 41 top-20s in that span. It took Scheffler just 54 starts to go from his first win to his 11th, the second-fastest pace ever.
Advertisement
And he hasn’t missed a cut since the St. Jude Championship in August 2022. With Scheffler, the poor rounds are the mementos, not the 65s. It allows us to see a side of Scheffler that’s become so rare. How does the best player of an era act when he’s suddenly human?
The truth of Scheffler has always been that he runs a lot hotter than he lets us know. He’s a competitor. He’s just mastered the art of separating those feelings and channeling that intensity to convince the greater public he’s a super calm, ho-hum golfer.
“He is really good at compartmentalizing his thoughts,” Scheffler’s college coach John Fields said. “When he’s with family, he’s with family. When he’s with (his wife) Meredith, he’s with Meredith. And when he’s on the golf course, he’s on the golf course, and he doesn’t mix those things.”
Friday, that frustration came out in spurts. The wild part is that it hardly ever carried over. After his poor drive on 13, he found the green and had an easy par. After he threw his putter on 15, he put his drive on 16 in the fairway and his approach on the green. After he slammed his bag on No. 3, he put himself in great position for birdie on No. 4. Scheffler leads the PGA Tour in the bounce-back category (how often a player follows a bogey or worse with a birdie or better) at 36 percent.
Sports psychologist Bhrett McCabe talks about the importance in golf of feeling what you need to feel and not restraining yourself constantly. The key is to feel it fully and let it go so not to carry it with you to the next hole.
“We are emotional people, and what separates us from most other animal species is the ability to be emotional and think and function through those emotions and make high-level cognitive decisions in that process,” McCabe said. “Well, if you’re out on the golf course and you’re competing, it’s a marathon filled with a lot of little sprints.”
Advertisement
The strange thing about Scheffler’s round Friday was he didn’t play horrible golf. He hit 11 of 14 fairways. He ranked 12th in the field in approach. When he hit those bad shots, he recovered well. The real issue was his putting. In strokes gained against the field putting, Scheffler lost 3.36 strokes Friday, his worst since the 2023 Tour Championship — when he was at the peak of his putting woes.
That compartmentalization can only go so far, though.
Scheffler entered Pinehurst’s par-5 fifth hole Friday at 3-over par, not great but still in the tournament considering his ability. He hit a nice drive to the right side of the fairway, right where you want to be. His second shot looked aggressive but on target. It landed on the left side of No. 5’s tricky, fascinating green and rolled off the side of the hill down to the native area. It left a brutal chip, because Scheffler (and Xander Schauffele next to him) had to deal with both the sandy native area and hit into a tucked left pin just over a steep hill.
Scheffler first attempted to bounce it off the hill and up to the green. Failure. It rolled right back down to his feet. Second attempt, he just rocked the ball way past the hole and across the green down another hill. He left his chip short, missed the bogey putt and was suddenly outside the cut line.
The Scottie-Xander-Rory group is having a rough go from the native area on 5. 😵💫 pic.twitter.com/eU7WUEUpkW
— U.S. Open (@usopengolf) June 14, 2024
Scheffler was no longer angry. He just shook his head in an ejected disbelief and practically laughed. This was not his day.
“You get down there and it’s kind of luck of the draw whether or not you have a shot,” Scheffler said. “Preferably I would have loved to have hit like a little runner out of there, but I had a bush in my way to where I couldn’t play the runner that I would have hoped to.”
He played the final four holes at par, four difficult holes with no good birdie opportunities. He didn’t show too much emotion, and he actually hit a near-perfect bunker shot over a steep ridge to par the final hole and potentially make the cut.
Advertisement
While group members Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele spoke at podiums finishing the day in the top 10, Scheffler walked to a little huddle of reporters in the pine straw. He was calm, even funny, far from the frustrated man we saw on the first 13 holes. He joked about how the native areas got the best of him and how maybe he should have practiced more. He said he felt fatigue after last week’s win at the Memorial, making him wonder if he needs to reevaluate his preparation plan before majors.
Then, he was asked if he had any fun Friday.
“I mean… not really,” he said before breaking out in a laugh.
“Playing poor golf is not fun, but I like the challenging aspect of it. I’ll sit back the next few days and kind of think about what went wrong.”
(Top photo: Gregory Shamus / Getty Images)