Finally. After three agonising runner-up finishes plagued by sluggish starts, Scottie Scheffler has burst out of the blocks with the sort of opening salvo he’s been craving all season.
The world number one grinded his way to a three-under par 67 on Thursday, seizing a share of the first-round lead at the PGA Championship alongside six rivals on a brutal Aronimink layout that’s showing its teeth.
“Definitely the best start I’ve gotten off to this year,” admitted Scheffler, the defending champion, though he was quick to acknowledge his opening 63 at January’s American Express triumph might challenge that claim.
The difference this time? No mountain to climb come the weekend.
From nearly man to front runner
Scheffler’s recent form has been stella, on paper. Three consecutive second-place finishes sounds impressive until you realise slow starts cost him genuine title tilts at the Masters, Hilton Head, and the Cadillac Championship.
At Augusta, opening rounds of 70-74 left him playing catch-up before a bogey-free weekend charge fell one stroke short of Rory McIlroy. At Hilton Head and Doral, his worst rounds came on day one, setting the tone for another week of what-ifs.
“I felt like, especially going into the weekend when you look at the Masters and Hilton Head and Cadillac, finishing second was probably not all that bad from where I was starting the weekend,” Scheffler reflected.
“Definitely nice to get off to a better start this week.”
Precision golf on a knife-edge course
Scheffler’s 18-hole major lead came courtesy of surgical precision off the tee. Missing just one of 14 fairways on Thursday, he navigated Aronimink’s unforgiving layout with the sort of accuracy that wins majors.
“There are a lot of run-ups on the greens and they put the pins on some of the high points,” Scheffler explained. “So your scores are definitely going to be lower if you hit the ball on the fairway, but it’s still really difficult to make birdies.”
The greens, in particular, are proving diabolical. Even flush iron shots to 10-15 feet leave players staring down putts with break that would make a rollercoaster jealous.
Nothing summed up Aronimink’s treachery better than Scheffler’s three-putt bogey at the 14th, where a four-footer on the highest point of the green broke viciously right despite perfect read.
His reaction? Laughter.
“I played it what I thought was right centre, and it broke pretty severely to the right,” Scheffler said. “There’s just not much you can do there other than laugh. That’s part of the game.
“Sometimes you get good and bad breaks. I holed a couple of long putts today and any time you’re able to do something like that, you’ve got to take the good with the bad.”
With seven players sharing the lead and the field tightly packed, Scheffler knows one round means nothing.
“It’s a really tight leaderboard,” Scheffler said. “At this moment it’s anybody’s tournament.”
The defending champion faces an early 8:40 a.m. (1240 GMT) tee time on Friday after his late Thursday start, whilst most co-leaders tackle the course in the afternoon when conditions could shift dramatically.
