It seems that the only thing stopping Masters victor Scottie Scheffler is the weather.
Scheffler looked so perfect that it was only a matter of time after he holed a challenging pitch for eagle on his second hole on Sunday to create some separation in the RBC Heritage.
He eventually ran out of time. Play was halted for two and a half hours by a storm system bringing heavy rain, and Scheffler managed to complete only fifteen holes before nightfall forced a Monday completion. With five shots to spare, he was unchallenged.
“Everyone chases Scottie, and he’s making it really tough because he keeps winning,” said Wyndham Clark, the winner of the U.S. Open, following his finest round of play.
At one time, Clark, who was seven strokes behind Scheffler going into the final round, opened birdie-eagle-birdie and was within one shot of him. After 11 holes, he was 8 under, but a mishap into the trees to the right of the 12th fairway resulted in a double bogey.
In this incredible run, Clark has already come second behind Scheffler twice: in back-to-back weeks in March at Bay Hill and The Players Championship. At least he was able to score a 15-under 269 and end his round at 6-under 65.
At 15 under, Patrick Cantlay and J.T. Poston joined him, having just missed the 18th green. On the sixteenth hole, Sahith Theegala was also 15 under and in the right rough.
Monday at 8 a.m. ET is when the last round is scheduled to resume. With three holes standing between him and a fourth event win in his last five, Scheffler is playing at a level of dominance not seen on the PGA Tour since Tiger Woods’ heyday.
His run of success was broken in the Houston Open, when he finished in second place after misjudging a putt from five feet that would have forced a playoff.
He is now in position to become the first player to win the week following donning the Masters green jacket since Bernhard Langer in 1985.
Scheffler was unrelenting on Sunday, particularly in the closing stages.
He believes mud on the bottom of his ball caused his second shot on the par-5 15th to find its way into the sea in front of the green. In the face of a fourth shot, trees obstructing his direct line to the flag, he hit a shot with sufficient spin to descend the slope to a distance of twelve feet.
The play-stop trumpet has sounded already. When Scheffler reached par, he decided to finish and gave a small fist pump. His run of 66 consecutive holes at par or better was continued by that.
Unlike his eagle on the second hole or the two birdies that followed, Scheffler’s celebration of that par was more emotional.
“I felt like the par was pretty important tonight, just being able to go to sleep and still keeping a clean card,” he stated. “I felt like I got a bad break there in the fairway. I haven’t had to hit a shot like that in a long time, so I figured there must have been mud on the bottom of the ball. Just nice to keep the card clean.”
Cantlay and Poston had good cause to wait if there’s a duel for second place, as it was at the Masters last week when Scheffler prevailed by four strokes.
It is worth approximately $800,000 more to be in second place alone ($2.16) compared to a four-way tie for second.
Cantlay put a marker adjacent to the rugged left collar of the green. About thirty yards from the back left pin, Poston was short of the green.
Unless the world’s best golfer makes a string of errors in the morning, nobody has a chance of catching Scheffler, and that seemed unlikely.
With Thursday’s double bogey on the third hole, Scheffler has not shot below par. His run of 53 holes without recording a score higher than a 4 on his scorecard began on the 15th hole of the first round.
With a one-shot advantage over Sepp Straka going into the last round, he made a statement on the par-5 second hole. His second shot was short-sided because the green swerved away from him, catching the back slope of a front bunker and shooting it over the green.
It launched into the cup with great precision, rebounding short and right, crawling up the slope. With a small pout on his lower lip, Scheffler glanced at his caddie, Ted Scott, and said, “Not bad.”
And then he was putting for a birdie on every hole save the eighth. He squandered two opportunities within ten feet, but calmly handled the par-5 fifth. On the thirteenth, he made a 6-foot birdie putt after his approach just missed the high railroad ties that framed the front bunker.
Now, all he needs to do is complete the process of getting another $3.6 million check before returning home, where his wife is expecting their first child the following week.
There are nine players who must finish, and Tom Hoge is not among them.
The horn went, and Hoge chose to complete the eighteenth. His tee shot went over the boundary. Hoge sliced his way to a quintuple-bogey nine as his fourth shot found its way into the native area. With his score of 74, he fell out of the sixth-place tie and into the 18th-place tie.
