At 106th PGA Championship, may the most resilient golfer win

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – You don’t lose if you get knocked down; you lose if you stay down.

Louisville icon Muhammad Ali said that, while world No. 5 Xander Schauffele lived it Thursday.

Schauffele, who has not won since the 2022 Genesis Scottish Open, shot a 9-under 62, the lowest round in PGA Championship history, at Valhalla. He is the latest reminder that it’s all but written into the job requirements of a golfer to keep on getting up off the mat.

“Yeah, I think not winning makes you want to win more, as weird as that is,” Schauffele said after carding the fourth 62 in a major and the first since he opened with the same score at last summer’s U.S. Open (T10). “For me, at least, I react to it, and I want it more and more and more, and it makes me want to work harder and harder and harder.”

Golf is like life, people say. It’s also like a "Rocky" movie.

Even the most elite pros take it on the chin, but they’re used to finding mental landing space between not winning and abject failure. It’s how they survive – and even learn. Rory McIlroy, who birdied three of his last five holes for a 5-under 66 (T4), spoke before the tournament of needing to put himself in competition to see where he is with his game.

Although harder to stomach, even the gut punches can be instructive, which may begin to explain why everywhere up and down the leaderboard at this PGA are examples of players picking themselves up off the mat – sometimes almost literally.

“I slipped a rib on Saturday the week before the Wells Fargo, and wasn't sure I was going to play,” said Sahith Theegala, who birdied his last three holes for a 6-under 65 at Valhalla on Thursday. “I immediately called my chiro (chiropractor) and got three really painful adjustments to get it back in place and couldn't really breathe or move all Saturday and Sunday.”

With aggressive rehab, he added, he has healed quickly and is now 100 percent.

Ben Kohles took four strokes to get down from just in front of the green on the last hole of THE CJ CUP Byron Nelson two weeks ago, losing to Taylor Pendrith by one. It was a brutal, cover-your-eyes knock-down, and yet there was Kohles shooting 67 on Thursday, five off the lead.

“I was pretty bummed and upset for about 15 minutes,” he said.

Tony Finau came into this week with only two top-10 finishes in 12 starts this year. He is 30th in the world, having fallen from world No. 11 after winning the Mexico Open at Vidanta last season.

And yet Finau, warming to a Valhalla that rewards prodigious tee shots, carded a 65.

“It can get frustrating, leaving tournaments a little disappointed and kind of searching,” he said. “I've always been very hopeful; I never feel like I'm far off. … That resilient attitude I think is huge when you're playing big tournaments. You've got to believe that you can play well.”

It speaks to the nature of golf that the top two players in the world, No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and No. 2 McIlroy, embody resilience like no one else. That would be easy to forget, given their eye-popping accomplishments, but we know better.

Last season Scheffler had 17 top-10 finishes but was beset by poor putting and won just twice. He was in tears after he and Brooks Koepka lost a Ryder Cup match 9 and 7. In 2022, Scheffler lost the TOUR Championship and FedExCup in agonizing fashion to McIlroy.

And yet this week Scheffler, the world and FedExCup No. 1 by a fair margin, is coming into the PGA Championship on the strength of four victories in his last five starts.

McIlroy has 20 top-10 finishes (most in golf, by three) but no wins in the majors since he won the 2014 PGA here. But even harsh blows at the 2022 Open Championship and 2023 U.S. Open – both of which he could have won with even halfway decent putting – couldn’t keep him down. He is the only three-time FedExCup winner and coming off wins in his last two starts, at the Wells Fargo Championship and Zurich Classic of New Orleans (with Shane Lowry).

His most resilient moment Thursday, McIlroy said, came at the par-5 18th, his ninth hole of the day. A good birdie hole became something else entirely after he hit his tee shot in the water.

“Yeah, dropped and took my medicine,” he said, “and yeah, made a great up-and-down from about 120 yards to make par, which was important after making bogey on 17.

“That kept any momentum that I had going into the next nine,” he added. (He shot 4-under 31 on the front, including a birdie at the first after his approach shot caromed off the pin.)

Schauffele shot 5-under 31 on the back nine to take the lead as he made the turn, and he extended it with birdies on Nos. 2, 4, 5 and 7. It’s easy to forget, amid all those highlights, that he has struggled to close out victories. His four appearances in Sunday’s final group on the PGA TOUR this season are second only to Scheffler (five), but Scheffler has him beat, four wins to zero.

Schauffele also has eight straight top-20 finishes in the majors, the most on TOUR, but is seeking his first trophy to go with his seven TOUR wins and a gold medal at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

And now, just four days after leading the Wells Fargo late on the front nine only to watch McIlroy go 8-under par in eight holes to beat him by five, Schauffele has rope-a-doped a 62.

Ali wasn’t a golfer, but he might have smiled and nodded at the leader’s lantern jaw. In a game that batters and bruises, dishing out lumps as relentlessly and dispassionately as the meanest sparring partner, there’s no choice but to get up, shake it off, and keep on moving forward.