TULSA, Okla. – Here was an unusual sight: Scottie Scheffler heading home on Friday.
The world No. 1 and reigning Masters champion missed the cut at the PGA Championship after rounds of 71-75 at Southern Hills. Scheffler was on the projected cut line as he played his final hole of the day, the par-4 ninth, but he made a mess: a drive into the fairway bunker, a miss left of the green, then a three-putt from 15 feet for double bogey.
“Definitely frustrating,” Scheffler said afterward. “I’m disappointed, too. It’s never fun missing cuts; I wanted to play the weekend. I tried to grind it out as hard as I could, and I just didn’t have it this week.”
It’s a rare occurrence: This is just the third time in the past year that Scheffler has missed the cut, and his first since last October. This spring he won four events in a 57-day span, including the Masters for his first major championship. Since then, he has tied for 18th at the Zurich Classic (with partner Ryan Palmer) and tied for 15th last week at the AT&T Byron Nelson.
Full-field scores from the PGA Championship
But here at Southern Hills (which he described as one of his favorite courses), Scheffler wasn’t sharp in any aspect of his game. Despite the relatively large landing areas, he hit just 15 of 28 fairways, and he lost strokes to the field both on and around the greens.
Scheffler had trouble closing out each of his two rounds. On Thursday, he bogeyed four holes in a six-hole span and needed to make a clutch par just to get in the house with an opening 71 – his first over-par score in two months. In a wind-whipped second round, he came home in 40. It was the first time since last November that he shot over par in consecutive rounds.
“I hit some good shots, hit some bad ones, and was punished pretty severely for the bad ones,” he said.
Among the other notable names who missed the 4-over 144 cut line: Dustin Johnson (5 over), Lee Westwood (6 over), Sergio Garcia (7 over), John Daly (8 over) and Patrick Cantlay (11 over).