Maybe more than any week on the PGA Tour schedule, Bay Hill delights in kicking your teeth in.
And on a noticeably punchy Saturday afternoon at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, Scottie Scheffler wasted no time getting started.
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The World No. 1 began a vexing third round at Bay Hill in particularly unusual fashion, recording three bogeys in his first five holes — and four in his first seven — to drop from the outskirts of the leaderboard to well out of contention. As he has for much of the week in Florida, the typically cool and collected Scheffler looked out of character with a club in his hands and out of patience without it, en route to a decidedly up-and-down 72. As if to emphasize the point, when his fourth bogey of the day dropped on the seventh hole, NBC cameras captured Scheffler crow-hopping his ball into the woods in disgust — his second frustrated ball-toss of the week.
By the time he made the turn, Scheffler had recorded his most bogeys on an opening nine in more than eleven months, since the second round of the Masters last April, and just one fewer black score than he recorded all week at the American Express in January. (Of course, another read of these stats emphasizes Scheffler’s brilliance in the 2020s, seeing as until the Genesis Invitational at the end of February, the World No. 1 had gone 11 months without a finish outside of the top 10.)
After it was over, Scheffler was blunt.
“Pretty up and down, I would say,” he said.
No kidding. But the ups were revealing, too. On a Saturday when Bay Hill pulled few punches, the 29-year-old responded with a few of his own. Just when it seemed he might fade from the competition entirely, Scheffler recorded four straight birdies between holes 11 and 14, and then added a fifth on the par-5 16th. He entered the 18th hole needing a birdie to get to six under for the tournament, seven shots out of the lead set by Daniel Berger and within striking distance for another Sunday charge.
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Instead, he wiped his approach short and right, watching helplessly as it bounced on a lakebed and plunged into the water. Scheffler folded over in exasperation as the ball disappeared into the water. He tidied up from there, but the damage was done: A double on the last had ended the momentum he’d battled so hard to win back. He finished the day at even par for the round, and 3 under for the tournament, 10 shots off the lead set by Daniel Berger.
“Out here the margins are just so small,” Scheffler said. “I felt like the breaks, when they go against you, you make bogeys, and when they go with you, sometimes you make birdies.”
On Saturday at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the story for Scheffler was in the margins. And at a golf tournament known for its snarl, the World No. 1 admitted that he left wounded.
“I think we get beaten up,” he said with a chuckle. “But golf’s a game that kind of beats you up anyways.”
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