For a small man, Rory McIlroy casts a long shadow. On Saturday, it covered every single one of the 52 other men in the field at the Masters, so that even the world’s No 1 golfer, Scottie Scheffler, found himself playing in the shade. Scheffler is a popular golfer, and a particular favourite with the fans around here after winning the tournament twice in the past three years, but as McIlroy’s round went on, Scheffler’s gallery started to thin quicker than Jordan Spieth’s hair. By the time he made the turn, you could pretty much take your pick of the positions around whichever green he was on. The centre of gravity was with McIlroy, back on the previous green.
Scheffler was a frontrunner during both of those victories, he led the field from the second round right through to the finish both times. Which means that this year he’s in the unfamiliar position of trying to scrap his way up past McIlroy, and everyone else in his way, into first place. He’s the tortoise chasing the hare. He scored an even-par 72, which left him five under par, and well off McIlroy’s lead.
Chasing doesn’t much suit Scheffler. Especially this year, when his finely tuned game seems just a little out of sync, like a clock that’s slipped a few seconds off. He started the day as one of a group of four players tied on five under, three shots behind Justin Rose’s lead, but found himself having to work hard just to hang on to what he had. Scheffler played a good round of bad golf, in which he made a lot of mistakes and managed to scramble back from them over and again. He ended up in a bunker at the 2nd, the 4th, the 5th and the 7th, and somehow he still managed to come through the first nine in level par.
Some other day, it would have been good enough, but not when McIlroy was playing the way he was just a couple of groups back down the course. Scheffler knew it too. You can always hear the roars at Augusta National, but one of the big differences this year is that the hurricane which blew through last September has removed so many trees you can see a lot of what’s going on around you too. So as Scheffler sweated his way around the opening holes, par, birdie, par, par, par, he was pursued by the sight, and sound, of McIlroy over his shoulder, tearing his way through that very same stretch in birdie, eagle, birdie, par, birdie.
And, up on the big white scoreboards around the course, the big red numbers kept running up alongside McIlroy’s name, seven under par, then nine, then 10, then 11.
Scheffler’s steady-as-she-goes golf is all well and good when his nearest competitors are making mistakes, but less effective when they are running up the sort of low scores that they managed on Saturday. And it started to show.
At the 5th, Scheffler snapped. He hit his drive in the one place he wanted to avoid, towards the pair of big bunkers down the left side of the fairway. “Dang it Scotty!” Scheffler shouted as he tossed his tee down on the ground. “What the heck was that?” Which is a blue streak by his standards. He got lucky that time, his ball somehow fetched up on the isthmus between the two sand traps, but he didn’t at the 7th, where he chopped his second out of the rough into the big back bunker, a shot that left him doubled over in frustration. He dropped one shot there and another at the 12th, where he took two putts after chipping on to the green.
But he picked up a second birdie at 15, after chipping to six feet, but he missed the chance to score a third on 18. Which left him right back where he began, on five under, only a lot further back from the lead than he had been at the beginning of the day.
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Scheffler’s partner, Tyrrell Hatton, wasn’t doing any better. They were an odd pair, the two of them, little and large, kitted out in nearly identical outfits. Hatton, squat, barrel-chested and with a furious temper, Scheffler straight-laced and square-shouldered as a tailor’s dummy.
Hatton did manage to hit his tee shot flush into the cup on the par-three 6th. Unfortunately for him, it was a beer cup that had been tucked under someone’s seat in the front row of the gallery. Hatton saw the funny side of that, but not the bogeys he made at the 1st, 12th, 16th and 18th. At the 12th Hatton tossed his ball straight into the water after tapping it in. Hatton always has the air of a time-bomb that’s got three seconds left on the clock. He finished three over for the day, and so right out of it, which is a reminder of just how wrong things can go at Augusta, and how well Scheffler had done to stop his own round getting away from him.
Knowing Hatton, he will probably have had a couple of choice words to say about it all. “Dang” and “Heck”, maybe.