Scottie Scheffler shoots ‘solid’ 67 at PGA Championship

LOUISVILLE, Ky. – Scottie Scheffler, No. 1 in the world and No. 1 in the FedExCup, came into the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club on the strength of four victories in his last five starts. In that torrid stretch he defended his title at THE PLAYERS Championship and won the Masters Tournament for the second time in three years.

But he also had taken the last three weeks off while awaiting the birth of his and wife Meredith’s first child, a boy who was born last week. Would Scheffler be rusty?

Nah.

Scheffler holed out for eagle from 169 yards at Valhalla’s opening hole and some five hours later made par at the par-5 18 hole to close out an opening-round, 4-under 67. He is five back of first-round leader Xander Schauffele, whose PGA-record 62 was the best round of the day by three.

“Yeah, I mean, there's nothing I can do,” Scheffler said. “Xander went out and played a great round this morning, and I'm not really going to worry about trying to shoot 9-under. I'm just going to go out and try to hit good shots and play my own game.

“Yeah, I'd like to clean up a few of the mistakes,” he added. “I missed two putts I felt like I should have holed today, but that's going to happen when the greens get a little chewed up.”

Scheffler’s four wins in 10 starts this season give him a higher winning percentage than five Major League Baseball teams, the Elias Sports Bureau noted. Should he win this week, he would be the first to get halfway to the calendar-year Grand Slam since Jordan Spieth in 2015. The last to get to the halfway mark before that was Tiger Woods in 2002.

Scoring was unusually low at rain-softened Valhalla, with many players taking advantage.

Even after failing to birdie the par-5 10th and 18th holes, Scheffler, who is in a six-way tie for 12th place, had only 11 players ahead of him on the leaderboard.

If he closes the gap and rise to the top of the leaderboard over the next 54 holes, when more rain is expected, Scheffler would be following in the footsteps of Woods and Rory McIlroy. Each was world No. 1 when he won PGA Championship at Valhalla in 2000 and ’14, respectively.

“Yeah, I'm just going to go hit a few balls, hit a couple putts and try to get to sleep as quickly as I can tonight,” Scheffler said. “I felt like there was a couple things I can clean up going into tomorrow, but overall today was a solid round.”