Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler, rounding Amen Corner locked in a two-horse race for the Green Jacket…. It was the duel everybody wanted and expected, it just didn’t materialise at Augusta National.
Not that too many minded when we had McIlroy versus Bryson DeChambeau, with Justin Rose and Ludvig Aberg stepping forward to add to the drama, but it’s worth remembering that Scheffler still finished in solo fourth, seemingly without making a consequential putt the entire week.
An hour or so after he’d signed his card, the world number one was reduced to a sideshow as he performed the ceremonial crowning of his successor in the Butler Cabin, then again on the 18th green. It was all about Rory, and rightfully so, but Scheffler is a born competitor and if you think that didn’t stick in his craw a little (or a lot), you don’t know much about competitiveness.
He performed his duties with a smile – you’d expect nothing else – but inside, it had to be killing him.
Now, as the leading players in the men’s game prepare to do battle at Quail Hollow, it’s Scheffler who has the point to prove, it’s Scheffler who has to remind everyone exactly why he’s the world number one, and it’s Scheffler who is feeling a nub of pressure to prove that he’s capable of winning major titles at a venue other than Augusta National.
The pressure on Rory has eased a little, of that there’s no doubt, but I’d push back against the idea that he’s totally freed up. Given his course history at Quail Hollow – he’s a four-time winner of the annual PGA Tour event staged there, making it the golf course he’s been most prolific on alongside the Emirates Course in Dubai – there’s more than a healthy amount of expectation that he wins his sixth major title this week.
And we’ve seen both the Jekyll and Hyde sides of McIlroy when dealing with the weight of expectation.
The McIlroy that arrives here in 2025 is a vastly different player from the one who arrived here in 2017 for Quail Hollow’s last US PGA Championship. His ceiling may not be any higher, but his floor certainly is. And that’s what major championships are about; allowing your good golf to put you in a position where you’ve a chance to win and stopping your bad golf from ejecting you out of the running.
And that’s where nobody has been better than Scheffler over the past three or four years. When you give yourself as many birdie chances as he does, even a week where the putter isn’t performing the way it should, he still makes plenty. And his short game and course management typically mean that bogeys are a rarity and doubles or worse virtually non-existent.
And it’s a big boy golf course, made even bigger by the thunderstorms that have been rolling through Charlotte and are forecast to continue at various intervals right up until Thursday and possibly beyond. This means plenty of long irons will be required, spin control with wedges will be paramount, and the premium on hitting fairways is ramped up.
If you’re a shorter hitter, you’d better have your accuracy on point or you’ve basically got no chance.
Scheffler arrives on the back of winning by a country mile at TPC Craig Ranch in Texas, admittedly against one of the weaker PGA Tour fields, but since winning has become a habit for him, he’s already a much more dangerous prospect than he was at the major venue that’s been his playground in two of the previous three years.
So, will Scheffler be the party pooper at Rory’s playground? Will we actually get to see the top two players in the game paired in the final group at a major for the first time since Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson at Augusta National in 2001?
Jon Rahm, Bryson DeChambeau, Xander Schauffele and many others will believe they can have something to say about that, but you just get the feeling that it’s going to come down to Rory versus Scottie on Sunday.
The PGA Championship might be the fourth major on everybody’s rankings, but that would be one hell of a way to change that….
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