Scottie Scheffler on the Masters on Sunday.
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Is it too late to parse the Masters? It isn’t! And so we will, particularly the surprisingly quiet week of the then world’s top-ranked participant, Scottie Scheffler. The defending champion started the fourth spherical 9 pictures behind Brooks Koepka. If Scheffler was in some way going to catch Koepka or whomever else would possibly ascend the leaderboard Sunday afternoon, he had a lot work to do.
Scheffler had had a “weird week” (his phrases) to that time. He struck the ball “amazing” (his phrase once more) en path to a first-round, four-under 68 however couldn’t make a putt, a pattern that bled into the second spherical, the place he posted an unpleasant 75. He felt so out of types on the course that had been so good to him a yr earlier that he mentioned it “felt like a little bit of an out-of-body experience.”
In attempting circumstances within the start-and-stop-and-start third spherical, Scheffler arrived on the famed par-3 twelfth, that dastardly little gap the place green-jacket goals go to die, at even for the day. As he launched a brief iron greenward, he regarded fearful, and rightfully so. He’d yanked it, his ball flying into the bushes lengthy and left. When he found his Titleist was unplayable (“it should have come out of the bushes,” Scheffler mentioned Wednesday from the RBC Heritage), he took a drop, then transformed a nifty up-and-down from the sting of the shrubs for a bogey 4. Scheffler birdied the 2 remaining par-5s — 13 and 15 — and signed for a one-under 71.
When the fourth spherical lastly commenced Sunday, Scheffer, at two underneath by means of 54 holes, wasn’t within the dialogue. With three area targets between him and Koepka, nobody was speaking about the ’22 Masters winner doubtlessly presenting the inexperienced jacket to himself later that day.
When Scheffler went out in three-under 33, he nonetheless wasn’t an actual risk. But after one other birdie on the robust par-4 eleventh, he was beginning to really feel himself.
Which brings us to his ensuing tee shot, again on the identical gap that had befuddled him a spherical earlier. Scheffler elected to hit a 9-iron and, effectively, you may need heard that unpredictable wind patterns on this gap can do unusual issues to golf balls. “I hit it the way I wanted to, it just kind of got in the jet stream,” Scheffler mentioned.
Typically, he hits a 9-iron about 155 yards. This shot, he mentioned, went about 180.
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His ball as soon as once more nosedived into the bushes behind the inexperienced and refused to sure again. Another goner. Another unplayable. This time leading to a momentum-wrecking double bogey.
“No. 12 killed me this week,” Scheffler mentioned after his spherical. “I still had a chance almost where I could post a score. I made a birdie on 11 and made a good swing there on 12.” Well, yeah, good till the golf gods determined in any other case.
On the subsequent gap, the newly lengthened do-or-die par-5 thirteenth, Scheffler missed the golf green in the fitting tough, however nonetheless performed the hero shot with his second — simply not effectively, muffle-hooking his ball into Rae’s Creek. “I was trying to make up all the shots at once there going for the green out of the rough,” he mentioned. If Scheffler had parred 12, he mentioned Sunday, “situationally I probably would have treated [13] different, but that was just me being a little immature, being out of the tournament.”
He saved par at 13 and performed the remaining 5 holes in even to complete with a two-under 70 and, finally, in a tie for tenth, nonetheless mystified by how he had performed Augusta’s shortest gap in three over for the week.
“Stuff happens on that golf course,” Scheffler mentioned Wednesday, reflecting on a dialog he had had with his caddie, Ted Scott. “I told Teddy, I just said I’m glad I made that mistake when we were eight shots back versus either last year when we were in the lead or in the years coming when we’re hoping to be close to the lead or in it again. It’s just a learning experience.”
At Augusta National, there’s an limitless provide of them.
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