Scheffler one shot back, seeks third straight win
These days, you expect to see Scottie Scheffler’s name high on any leaderboard, so it was hardly breaking news when the world’s topranked golfer delivered a bogey-free, 5-under-par 65 at Memorial Park Thursday.
Only two players posted a better score, Scheffler’s fellow Texas-based pro Taylor Moore, who carded a 64, and early-evening finisher Wilson Furr, who birdied the last two holes for the same score. Davis Riley threatened to also do so until he missed 5-footer for birdie on 18. One could have forgiven Moore, the world’s 62nd-ranked golfer, if he had been looking nervously over his shoulder while conducting his obligatory postround interview with Scheffler in the clubhouse, too. He’s always lurking, it seems, having come to Houston for his final tuneup before the Masters and seeking a third PGA Tour victory in three starts, a feat accomplished but once during the past decade, by Dustin Johnson in 2017.
And the 27-year-old Scheffler, who was the leader of the pack through much of his back nine, seemingly wasn’t even on form when the day began, missing his first three greens in regulation. It didn’t faze him in the least, obviously.
“I had a clean card — bogey-free is always nice on a course like this,” he said, adding, “I made a nice putt there at the first (hole) to kind of get the round going and made some really nice up and downs after that. It’s a difficult place to play golf. The holes are really long.”
Except Scheffler has been making every course look way easier than they’re supposed to be. Almost half of his rounds in 2024 — 12 total if you’re counting — have required 66 or fewer shots. It was also his 28th consecutive PGA Tour sub-par round. That’s nuts.
He’d taken a longer-thannormal break last week coming off an extraordinary finish at the Players Championship, where he managed a first successful title defense of that high-profile event by overcoming a fivestroke deficit on Sunday with the tournament’s best final round score ever, a 64.
“Typically I take Monday and Tuesday off,” Scheffler said, “but last week I didn’t practice until Friday and just hit balls for maybe half an hour, chipped and putted. Just getting back into it, hitting some wedges, hitting some irons, didn’t hit any drivers. I played golf Saturday and I had a decent practice session Sunday.”
“I pushed my drive a touch on the first and I think I literally found the only piece of rough on the golf course and it was like up against that wall,” he said. “I know I’m not supposed to hit over there, but good getting a par there. I hit a good shot into the second, just came up a little short. I thinned one into the third. I wasn’t really thinking too much about my swing, I just missed a couple greens.”
“Rusty,” to be sure, is a relative term for him. Most of his fellow Tourists would love to be his kind of rusty.
Scheffler repeated what he’d said a day earlier. No, as hot as he may be, he doesn’t start every tournament thinking he’s going to be holding the trophy come Sunday evening.
“I try and stay patient, try not to look too far ahead,” he insisted. “Try to take it one shot at a time, I like to control things I can control, staying committed to the shot. I don’t ever really put expectations on myself.”
Moore’s own stellar round began with a bogey, but he quickly countered that with an eagle on the 587yard par-5 third hole and three birdies followed over the next six. He finally got his leg, or maybe just a foot, up on Scheffler, who had three birdies over a fourhole stretch on the front nine — his back nine — with a second consecutive birdie on 16.
“I hit a lot of greens,” said Moore, who had tied for 12th in an attempted title defense of his own at the Valspar Championship Sunday. “After the first hole, I just tried to see how many greens I could hit. Got off to a little bit of a jump start there on 3, chipping in for eagle, then birdied 4 (to get) into the round.”
Joe Highsmith, seeking a first-ever PGA Tour title and, hence, unlikely candidate to be Scheffler’s equal on the board come Sunday, also matched Scheffler’s and Riley’s 65. Riley, who, after getting an adrenaline boost with an eagle on 17, was tearing up the front nine until that putting hiccup on the final hole.
“Shooting a 5-under on the first day is a win,” he said. “I’m just trying to build momentum. I feel like I’ve got some good clarity now.”