Scottie Scheffler came into the week at Quail Hollow as one of the men to beat. By the time he reached The Green Mile on Sunday, nobody was even close to knocking him off the top of the mountain.
Scheffler won his third major, and his first outside of Augusta National, with a five shot victory at the PGA Championship with a score of 11-under par.
After a relatively quiet first two days, Scheffler made a late charge on Saturday to vault into the lead. He shot 5-under par over the final five holes of that third round to take a three-shot lead into Sunday.
So it was obvious that the bets golfer in the world wasn’t going to blow a three-shot lead on the final Sunday of a major, right? Well, for a while, it didn’t appear so.
Scheffler got off to a rocky start in his final round, giving two shots back with a trio of bogeys on the front nine. LIV Golf star Jon Rahm made a hard charge even tying the lead at 9-under with a birdie at the par-4 11th.
Scheffler was wobbling while Rahm was catching fire, and it looked like it may be the Spaniard stealing the Wanamaker Trophy out of nowhere.
However, like all great champions do, Scheffler landed on his feet and quickly steadied himself.
Just after Rahm tied the lead, Scheffler made a birdie on the par-5 10th hole to get back in front. He followed that up with crucial birdies on Nos. 14 and 15 to get to 12-under while the leaderboard fell apart behind him.
With the rest of the chasers, stuck in neutral, Rahm fell victim to The Green Mile just as Bryson DeChambeau did on Saturday. A bad drive on the 16th set up a bogey before the two-time major champion hit his iron shot through the 17th green and into the water, making double bogey.
Rahm stepped up to the 18th tee out of contention and six shots off of Scheffler’s pace, but he found the water again and made another double bogey to finish T-8 at 4-under.
Scheffler is now up to three majors in his career, breaking out of the large pack stuck at two that includes Rahm, DeChambeau, Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa and Justin Thomas.
He will head to Oakmont for the U.S. Open as one of the favorites to win and complete the third leg of the Grand Slam.
He has also won two starts in a row now and is firmly back at the top of the mountain in golf.
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