Scheffler wins PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club

CAMERON WILLIAMS | THE CHARLOTTE POST

Scottie Scheffler hoists the Wannamaker Trophy Sunday after winning the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte. Scheffler and Jon Rahm were tied at minus-9 in the final round, but Scheffler pulled ahead to win at minus-11, five strokes ahead of the field.

Golf isn’t a game of perfect, even for Scottie Scheffler.

The novel “Golf is not a game of perfect,” authored by Bob Rotella in 1995, discusses golf not being about the best shots, but overcoming lackluster ones. Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 ranked player, said this week’s PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Club was similar.

With a three-shot advantage heading into Sunday’s final round, the tournament appeared all but over. After Scheffler gave a few shots back with bogeys on holes 6 and 9, it opened the door for Spaniard Jon Rahm to make a push and even tie for the lead at minus-9 at one point. Scheffler rallied down the stretch to finish minus-11, five strokes ahead of the field.

“Overall, I was proud of how I stepped up on the back nine and hit the shots I needed to,” Scheffler said. “It was a big birdie I hit on 10. I hit quality shots on 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 really, and I was able to build up a lead and play pretty conservative the last three holes. I had two nice up-and-downs there on holes 16 and 17, and I was able to kind of slap it around there on 18.”

Rahm went 5-over in the final three holes, Quail Hollow’s “Green Mile,” which statistically plays harder than the others. 

“I think it was a bit of nerves,” Rahm said, “I can't pinpoint exactly right now. I'll go back to what happened. I didn't feel like I rushed anything. I didn't feel like the process was bad. So, that's something that I can't quite tell you right now.”

Although he has been the closest to a perfect golfer since prime Tiger Woods, Scheffler said one thing he enjoys most is the ongoing pursuit of “figuring things out.”

“When I think about the game of golf, my favorite thing to do in golf is probably just — when I can be by myself and I can just practice,” he said. “It's one of the most fun things for me. It's so peaceful, and I love the pursuit of trying to figure something out. That's what I love about this game. 

“I feel like you're always battling yourself, and you're always trying to figure things out. You're never going to perfect it. I can be kind of a crazy person sometimes when it comes to putting my mind to something. In golf, there's always something you can figure out, there's always something you can do better. It's a great challenge, and it's a lot of fun.”

Scheffler said his plans now are not out of the ordinary. He and his wife and 1-year-old son will go home and celebrate, then start preparing for the next tournament. The trophy will go home as well.

“Where's [the trophy] going to go? I have a room in my house called the Golf Room,” he said, “and that's where all my [golf memorabilia] goes, literally. It's just a room full of all my golf junk. I've got some trophies in there as well, and that's probably where this one will go… I’d like to say it’s nicely presented, but it’s not.”

Scheffler’s rise to stardom happened rather quickly. In 2022, he went from winning his first PGA Tour event to a pair of Masters tournaments, PGA Championship and FedEx Cup championship within three years.

“I think, if I go to what I was feeling Sunday morning before the Masters in '22, three months before that tournament, I had just won my first tournament on the PGA Tour. I won my first tournament in February, and all of a sudden, I've got a three-shot lead going into Masters Sunday as the No. 1 player in the world. It's one of those deals where my wife and I were sitting there, like, ‘how did we get to this point? What's gone on in the last couple years of our life that kind of put us here?’ I'm just not sure if we were ready for all that it entailed. It's a different lifestyle coming out here and playing now than it was for me four or five years ago.”

Comments