Scheffler's remarkable resilience allows him overcome major stumble to win at Quail Hollow

The 42

19-05-2025

IF RORY MCILROY'S MASTERS triumph was a mass exorcism of past error and heartbreak, Scottie Scheffler's victory at the 2025 PGA Championship is a testament to his refusal to allow a single ghost visit his feasts.
Scheffler is blessed with the amnesia of the greatest sportspeople, and so he is not conditioned or cowed by anything that has gone before.
Thus this victory was neither exuberant nor dramatic, but instead a prime exhibit of Scheffler's astonishingly uncluttered mind. He shakes negativity out of his mind like the rest of us shake out the water clogging our ears.
Scheffler lost his three-shot lead across a front nine in which he effectively lost his swing from the tee, continually hitting wildly left and leaking shot after shot after shot. Jon Rahm rose to a share for the lead, but he did at exactly the point Scheffler washed himself of whatever was holding him back.
From there he strode for home to win by five. This is his third major title, but it will be remembered as just another milestone of what will be one of the greatest careers in the history of professional golf.
Scheffler's God-fearing caddie Ted Scott posted a video to Instagram today, titling it a Sunday Sermon, holding forth on Scheffler's virtues. Looking back on the arrest on the Friday morning of this event last year, Scott praised Scheffler's sheer lack of emotion; the fact he did not get angry or demonstrative, that he did not seek vengeance and instead sought 'wise counsel.'
Scott said he would not have had the same zen, but would instead have been blinded with pity and range. Scott will tell you these qualities are what makes Scottie Scheffler a good Christian. They are also what makes him a great golfer: he has a stunning ability to react to setbacks.
It's a quality best distilled by the fact he made bogey or worse 11 times this week, but responded with a birdie on the next hole on six occasions. (One of those was on the 72nd hole, so he'll presumably open with a birdie at his next event.) Nobody in the field came close to that kind of bounceback rate.
Scheffler began looking bizarrely human, consistently missing left. He went wide and in that direction off holes two, five, seven, eight and nine. While a birdie on the second atoned for a bogey on the first hole, he went on to drop shots at six and nine – and effectively another by only making par at the generous par-five seventh – to make the turn at two-over par.
But his competitors were busy granting him forgiveness for his sins. Rahm was the only one of the last six starters to avoid bogey at the first, while JT Poston, Si Woo Kim, Davis Riley and his playing partner Alex Noren all played their opening nine over-par.
But then Rahm stirred to declare intent. First he birdied the eighth hole and followed them with birdies on 10 and 11. When Scheffler found himself on the 10th green, he took a long look at the leaderboard and realised the water level had suddenly risen. He was back in a tie for the lead.
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To look at Scheffler surveying that leaderboard – a chronicle of all he had lost and what more he might yet lose – was our invitation to try gaze into his mind, and wonder whether he had the wherewithal to respond. By that stage, though, we were already too late, for Scottie Scheffler had it all figured out.
Somewhere on the way to 10th tee he managed to find an adjustment to his swing, which instantly wiped away the left-hand miss. Having flushed that drive down the fairway, he made birdie to regain the lead.
He then indulged the pleasure of the golfing gods. Rahm saw a brilliant birdie putt lip out on 13, and then got a brutal kick right and into a bunker having drawn a gorgeous 5-wood off the tee and into the 14th green. Rahm missed the birdie putt and then failed to score on the par-five 15th, missing with another poor putt.
This meant Rahm had to plead for mercy down the Green Mile, but his aggression in doing so was punished. Rahm went miles left on 16 – 'yep, that's fucked' he told his caddie as it took its crooked arc – and made bogey, and so had to attack the pin on the par-three 17th. It was a necessarily bold gambit, but one that yielded a shattering double-bogey. He then went into the creek snaking along the left of the 18th green and made another double.
It was a spectacular closing implosion, but Scottie Scheffler drives people to these extremes. Scheffler thus arrived to the punishing trio of closing holes as a picture of serenity.
Having birdied each of the scoreable 14 and 15 holes, he stood on the 16th tee with a three-shot lead.
By the time he was taking his second shot the lead was five.
By the time he left the green, it was six.
The winning score was five, after his putt on the final hole came up just short.
Major celebrations.
Having wept his way up the final fairway, Scheffler raised his arms and then slammed his hat into the green, a call-back to McIlroy's celebration after the 73rd hole at Augusta last month.
Both have won the year's first two majors in very different ways.