Suddenly a PGA Tour season that was already interesting has reached another level.
The victory by Scottie Scheffler (Titleist Pro V1) in the PGA Championship reaffirmed he has found his game. The resounding win the CJ Cup Byron Nelson coupled with his victory in the PGA Championship is proof of that. He just seems to have fixed whatever was preventing him from winning again, though he had been a factor prior to his win victory streak. Whether it took him awhile to finally feel physically right after an off-season hand injury or making a slight imperceptible change in his game, he’s on fire again.
Clearly he had shows signs of frustration this year, but if his last two tournaments are any indication Scheffler is back in form. He is the prohibitive favorite to win the Charles Schwab Challenge this week.
What’s interesting about the PGA Championship was how it centred on Scheffler and Rory McIlroy (TaylorMade TP5) for the second consecutive year. Going into last year’s event, McIlroy found himself in the spotlight when news broke of his split from his wife and divorce papers filed. McIlroy refused to talk about it with the media, though he did go into it with Netflix in the off-season for Season 3 of Full Swing. Scheffler, meanwhile, unintentionally deflected the media glare around McIlroy when he was arrested and handcuffed prior to his start in the second round. The charges were later withdrawn, but it was one of the most
bizarre things to happen in golf: Scheffler, the last person anyone would expect in golf to get into a confrontation with police. That he was able to make it to the first tee in time to play in the second round after spending time in a prison cell instead of on the practice range and play well was stunning to say the least. But there was no drama this year for him, other than a win.
It was McIlroy who, again, found himself in the center of another uncomfortable incident. This time it happened because he had his driver removed from his bag after it was determined it failed to meet to conformity rules in random testing before the PGA Championship started. McIlroy refused to talk about it. He played poorly in the event and was never a factor, making the cut on the mark and finishing in 47th place.
PGA of America’s Championships Officer Kerry Haigh was quoted as saying: “Finding driver heads that have crept over the line of conformance is not an unusual occurrence, especially for clubs that are hit thousands of times over a long period of time. The results are kept confidential to protect players, who are unaware the club has fallen out of conformance. To publicly identify players whose club did not conform can lead to the player being questioned unnecessarily.”
He said about a third of the players were tested.
And yet, it leaked about that McIlroy was using an illegal driver.
So right away it begs the question, for how long had McIlroy being using an illegal driver? Did he know about it? And did he use it in the Masters? All this has done is put a blemish on his epic win at the Masters to complete his personal career Grand Slam.
Presumably, McIlroy will talk about it soon or leave it for Season 4 of Full Swing.
Scheffler acknowledged after he won he had been forced to switch his driver when it also failed to meet conformity. He acknowledged that the driver “did fail me.” He said he had been using the driver for more than a year. The replacement driver clearly did not affect his performance.
Haigh said repeated use of the club wears down its face and causes a trampoline effect, which is called coefficient of restitution (COR), and can add distance. Thus, there are rules to guard against it.
“I would argue that if we’re going to test the drivers, we need to be even more robust in the way we test them,” Scheffler said. “It’s a newer rule that we haven’t quite gotten right yet. I think we have some stuff to figure out, get more robust and get even more strict. You can test guys every week if you want. I mean, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t.”
It’s interesting that McIlroy is no longer a shoo-in to be named PGA Tour player of the year. While has three victories and Scheffler has two, they both have a major win with two more to go and plenty of significant tournaments on the schedule.
ON SECOND THOUGHT: Last week I wrote a blog in which I said there was no doubting Justin Thomas (Titleist Pro V1x) heading into the PGA Championship. I was convinced he would win, but he missed the cut. He wasn’t the only high-profile player to miss the weekend play, but I had picked him in a survivor poor I am in to make the cut. Now I’m out after only four tournaments.
