OLYMPIA FIELDS, Ill. – Scottie Scheffler’s march toward East Lake hit an unexpected roadblock.
Ahead by one at the BMW Championship, Scheffler was 20 yards short of the green at the par-5 15th. The tournament hung in the balance, for an up-and-down here would have put him comfortably ahead with just three holes to play at Olympia Fields. One of the game’s best scramblers, a big man with soft hands, Scheffler’s pitch shot landed about a foot shy of where he wanted, checked up in the sticky poa annua and settled 15 feet below the hole for a longer-than-expected birdie look.
When that putt didn’t drop, it set in motion a stunning sequence of events that produced a surprise winner in Viktor Hovland and a frustrated FedExCup leader.
Up ahead, Hovland was putting the finishing touches on the round of his life – a back-nine 28 that gave him a sizzling Sunday 61 – and Scheffler couldn’t match him. Scheffler doubted his read on a 6-foot birdie putt on 16 and missed. Behind for the first time all day, he then three-putted from 21 feet on 17, including a miss from 4 feet. Hovland watched from the locker room as Scheffler’s last-ditch eagle try from the fairway came up short.
Full-field scores from BMW Championship
“I’m just a bit frustrated,” said Scheffler, who wound up two shots behind Hovland’s winning total of 17-under 263. “I think that would be the way to describe it. Viktor went out and really just beat me today and played a fantastic round. I can hold my head high – I did my best out there today and fought hard. Just ultimately came up a couple shots short.”
Scheffler’s late wobble will do little to shift the attention away from his suspect putting.
His ball-striking this season has been at a level that hasn’t been seen since Tiger Woods’ prime. Entering the week, Scheffler was gaining 2.69 strokes on the field with his ball-striking – the second-best figure in the ShotLink era (since 2004), when Tiger Woods was 2.98 in 2006.
Woods, of course, parlayed that peerless play into eight wins in 15 starts, but Scheffler hasn’t been nearly as dominant. He has won just twice, and not since the Players Championship in March.
The culprit?
A balky putter that ranks 146th on Tour. (By way of comparison, Woods was 21st during the 2006 season.)
At times, Scheffler has been sensitive and defensive about his chief weakness, even calling it a manufactured media narrative. But he also made some concessions, changing to a mallet-style model ahead of the playoff opener last week in Memphis. It didn’t prove to be a quick fix: Scheffler was erratic on the greens here at the BMW, where he gained strokes on the field in Rounds 1 and 3 while losing a total of 4.2 strokes in the second and final rounds. For the week, overall, he ranked 38th in a field of 49.
“It’s definitely frustrating,” he said, “but I approached the shots the way I wanted to today and just didn’t hole the putts there at the end.”
There was a small consolation prize for Scheffler, who moved from second to first in the FedExCup standings, giving him, for the second year in a row, a two-shot head start at next week’s Tour Championship. Last year at East Lake, he grew that advantage to six shots entering the final round, but he shot 73 on the last day and was passed by Rory McIlroy, who claimed his third FedExCup title.
Scheffler said he’ll take Monday off in Atlanta before beginning his preparation for the season finale.
When asked about the accumulation of near-misses lately – his six runner-up finishes the last two seasons are tied for the most on Tour – Scheffler struck a philosophical tone.
“I’m never satisfied with how my score is at the end of the day,” he said. “Viktor is probably pretty happy with a 61, but if you ask him, I’m sure he left one shot out there somewhere. Perfection is unattainable in this game, and that’s something I guess we’re always striving for, but we always seem to fall short.”
