On Friday evening Scottie Scheffler was in the new player facility going back and forth over his putting game. Despite himself, he got sucked into watching what Rory McIlroy was doing on the big TVs the club have up in the training room. “It was pretty special stuff,” Scheffler admitted. And by the time McIlroy had finished Scheffler, the world’s No 1 golfer, had a different perspective on the tournament. He had scored 70 and 74 himself, and was even-par for the tournament, 12 shots off McIlroy’s lead, with 36 holes to play and nothing left to lose.
All of a sudden a tournament which has a way of making the game feel very complicated indeed had become very simple for him. Scheffler needed birdies. And he got them. He made five altogether, along with an eagle. He scored 65, seven under. It was the best round he’s ever played in the Masters. “I think that’s what great players do,” Scheffler said. “They rise to the occasion when you are at the biggest tournaments, and you’d be hard pressed to find another tournament that’s bigger than this one, especially for me.”
Things started rolling at the long downhill 2nd, where Scheffler whistled his approach straight into the heart of the green and then made a six-foot putt for eagle, and they really started to pick up speed when he got to the 7th. They say Augusta National was designed to be a second shot golf course, and when he’s in this sort of form there’s nobody better at them than Scheffler. He hit his approach at the 7th to six feet, at the 8th, it was 14ft, and at the 9th, it was four feet. That put him five under through nine.
The crowd were thick around him now. They’d stuck his name up on the big white leaderboards around the grounds. They don’t allow any running at Augusta but as word spread that Scheffler was on a tear people came marching from all corners to catch up to him. They were standing 20-deep by the time he made it to Amen Corner, where he hit was maybe his best shot yet at the 11th, from 200 yards out. It came curling around the bank on to the front of the green, the roars swelling all the way till it stopped eight feet from the pin.
It was the 13th that finally checked his progress. Scheffler looked to have hit a perfect tee shot to the inside corner of the dogleg, but this time he was a little thick with his approach and it fetched up in the middle of the three greenside bunkers. He said later it was a mud ball. Either way, it meant he had to scramble up and down for par. There was one more birdie, at the 16th, and two that got away either side of it, when he had short putts at the 14th and 17th, one from 12ft, and the other only half as far. There was a record-breaking round out there, a couple of inches away.
Scheffler didn’t appreciate the suggestion that he could, and maybe should, have been even better. “Terrible question,” he snapped. “Next question. Awful.” But he went on to admit in his next breath that “it definitely could have been lower”.
“But I did what I needed to do. Went out and executed to give myself some opportunities,” Scheffler said. “I hit it really nice today. I felt like I was very sharp with the irons. Got it up there. Gave myself a lot of opportunities. I felt like I took advantage of those on the front nine, and then back nine I did a lot of good things. I was really, really close to seeing a lot go in. More of that tomorrow, and I think I’ll be in a good spot.” He is four shots back, which isn’t so far when he’s playing like this.
He will have kept one eye on McIlroy on Saturday too, and will have seen the way he wobbled as he came around Amen Corner. “I think that’s why it’s such a great test,” Scheffler said. “Not only do you have to conquer this golf course, you have to conquer changing conditions, and you also have to conquer your nerves to get it done around here. There’s numerous challenges to get it done in this tournament, and we’ll see what happens as the weekend progresses.”