He won at Arnold Palmer. He won at the house of the PGA Tour. He won in Augusta and per week later in Hilton Head.
Scottie Scheffler was already one of the best golfer on this planet, but on Sunday he prolonged his lead even further with a win on the Memorial Tournament – Jack Nicklaus's premier event – for his fifth victory in eight tournaments.
On the difficult Muirfield Village course, where only five players played under par on Sunday, Scheffler fended off runs from Collin Morikawa and Adam Hadwin, shooting 74 in the ultimate round and beating Morikawa by one stroke.
With this victory, Scheffler becomes the primary golfer since Justin Thomas in 2017 to win five PGA Tour events in a single season. And we're only in June, with two majors and the FedEx Cup Playoffs left. And all five wins have come at signature events: the Masters, the Players Championship, the Arnold Palmer Invitational, the RBC Heritage and now the Memorial.
Scheffler began Sunday with a four-stroke lead over Morikawa and the remaining of the sector. With the course so fast and hard, Scheffler played the primary nine holes over par while Canadian Hadwin did all the things he could to get inside one shot.
Morikawa also stayed inside one stroke for a lot of the back nine, but while much of the sector fell behind, Scheffler remained regular. Despite missing seven of his first 11 fairways on Sunday, he shot par for eight consecutive holes and never relinquished the lead.
Scheffler even made a bogey on the seventeenth hole, giving Morikawa the chance to tie on the 18th. Scheffler's approach shot then bounced hard off the green and landed within the rough, but Morikawa landed in the identical rough behind the pin.
To win, Scheffler needed to sink a 5-foot putt to make par, and with an emotional fist pump he secured the win.
Big win. Big fist pump.
🏆🏆🏆🏆🏆 pic.twitter.com/Q6jydEACll
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) June 9, 2024
The close result means one other tough second-place finish for Morikawa, the two-time major winner who has had his best season since his 2021 campaign but has fallen several times. He was in the ultimate rating at each the Masters and PGA Championship this spring, but was seven and 6 strokes behind the winner in each, respectively.
He also competed within the RBC Heritage on Sunday, two meters behind Scheffler, but finished six meters behind.
Scheffler is currently a 3-1 favorite at next week's US Open in Pinehurst and is on target to change into the game's biggest favorite since Tiger Woods' heyday in 2010.
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image credit : www.nytimes.com
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