PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. \u2013 Scottie Scheffler has two more rounds at a tournament he\u2019s dominated two out of the last three years. That\u2019s the good news.<\/p>\n
Pretty much everything else for the world No. 1 on Friday at The Players Championship was bad news. His driving, which was already under scrutiny, got worse. Through 36 holes, he\u2019s 66th in strokes gained: off the tee. He hasn\u2019t ranked worse than second in that statistic the last four years on Tour.<\/p>\n
While his normally sublime iron play was vaguely familiar \u2014 he\u2019s 17th in strokes gained: approach \u2014 he struggled again on Day 2 on the greens. Scheffler made birdie on his final hole to shoot 73 and finish at 1 over, just inside the cut line \u2014 his 70th consecutive made cut on Tour.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve played this tournament on the cut line the last couple holes, and it\u2019s not fun,\u201d said Justin Thomas, who was grouped with Scheffler for the first two rounds. \u201cIt\u2019s unlike any other place we play because it\u2019s over or not in one swing. If you\u2019re on the cut line and you\u2019re standing on 17, if you hit it in the water, you\u2019re all but done. Then the same kind of goes for 18 on the tee shot. It\u2019s every bit as hard as trying to win a golf tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n
He added about Scheffler, \u201cNo, you can just tell. It\u2019s just timing and trying to match [the swing] up. He\u2019s still hitting shots that not many people on planet earth can hit in the same rounds. It\u2019s just golf.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s been hitting it pretty much where he wants within like a blanket size for what seems like two or three years. He\u2019s still had a pretty damned good year. I know I\u2019d trade with him, but I\u2019m probably not the person to ask.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scheffler\u2019s cut drama began with another missed drive into the right rough at the 14th hole, followed by a hack-and-hope wedge that landed 100 feet short of the hole \u2014 bogey.<\/p>\n
At the par-5 16th, another drive dug into the right rough, but what should have been a decent look at birdie turned into his first three-putt of the week when he missed a 2 \u00bd-footer for par.<\/p>\n
A perfect drive that hugged the lake at the final hole, however, set up an approach to 9 feet for birdie to secure two more rounds at TPC Sawgrass. It also gives him a chance to find something in his game that has been missing since he won his season opener at The American Express.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. \u2013 Scottie Scheffler has two more rounds at a tournament he\u2019s dominated two out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523365,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-523364","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523364","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523364"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523364\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523365"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523364"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523364"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523364"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}