police investigated a Friday night shooting near the golf course<\/a>. Players teed off as normal, but spectators were held outside the gates until 9 a.m. local time. Once they arrived, they had a good look at a familiar sight: Scottie Scheffler tearing up the golf course.<\/p>\nAdvertisement<\/p>\n
After two days in which he struggled so badly he entered his final hole of Friday on the cut line, Scheffler spent Saturday playing a more familiar game. With five birdies, he rocketed up the leaderboard to get to 4-under. While he likely won\u2019t win his third Players Championship, he recovered a bit of his game \u2026 or, to hear him tell it, he played exactly as he needed to.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I look at tournaments, I’m not thinking about winning, I’m thinking about approaching things the right way,\u201d Scheffler said after his round. \u201cI did my best to stay committed, and I did a good job, I think, of keeping the right attitude and keeping my head on straight in order to grind out a couple rounds that were difficult. And then I shot a nice round today \u2026 For me, that’s a good week.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rory McIlroy, Scheffler\u2019s fellow two-time winner and the defending Players champion, didn\u2019t fare as well. McIlroy struggled through an up-and-down even-par round \u2014 three birdies, three bogeys \u2014 and clearly isn\u2019t playing with the kind of sharpness he\u2019d expect of himself heading toward April.<\/p>\n
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One of the best rounds of the day \u2014 a stroke better than Scheffler\u2019s 67 \u2014 belonged to PGA Tour rookie Sudarshan Yellamaraju, making just his seventh Tour start. Yellamaraju needed three birdies in his final four holes on Friday to make the cut, then piled on another six birdies on Saturday to get to 5-under on the week.<\/p>\n
\u201cMaking cuts is pretty important out here, because from there you just never know what you can do on the weekend,\u201d the Canadian said after his round. \u201cI want to contend and win, that’s the next thing, but got to start somewhere, so making cuts is a good start.\u201d<\/p>\n
There have been more active days at The Players, but not many better napping ones. Cameras caught one fan enjoying a prime golf nap:<\/p>\n
The players didn\u2019t have that luxury. On a largely favorable scoring day for the rest of the field, \u00c5berg, Schauffele and the rest of the leaders failed to capitalize. \u00c5berg played the front nine in even par, Schauffele at 1-over, allowing several others to sneak into the mix. Thorbjornsen, Jacob Bridgeman (7-under) and the ageless Justin Rose (6-under) all went low to put themselves in position to challenge for the win on Sunday.<\/p>\n
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One chaser who struggled: Justin Thomas, who had ridden a pair of weekday 68s to within three shots of the lead to start the day. But a catastrophic two-hole stretch \u2014 bogey\/triple bogey on 5 and 6 \u2014 sent him tumbling down the leaderboard. He\u2019s at 8-under and tied for fourth.<\/p>\n
But with everything going on behind him, \u00c5berg didn\u2019t slip. He picked up his third eagle of the week two holes after making the turn when he stuck his approach on the par 5. That pushed the lead to four at the time.<\/p>\n
His only real slip was at the 18th, where he three-putted for a bogey. That completed his 71, and gave him the three-shot lead entering Sunday.<\/p>\n
Thorbjornsen jumped up into contention, too. After opening the week with a 74, he backed up Friday\u2019s 65 with a 5-under round on Saturday to get to 10-under and into solo second. If he can somehow overtake \u00c5berg and pull off the win, it\u2019ll be the worst start by a winner of The Players Championship in the event\u2019s history. Cameron Young nearly played his way into the final group, though he doubled the 18th to drop to 9-under.<\/p>\n
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But, after \u00c5berg\u2019s incredibly steady outing on Moving Day, it\u2019s going to take quite a bit for Thorbjornsen or anyone else to actually pull off a comeback win.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His round wasn\u2019t anything special, but Ludvig \u00c5berg is in full control entering the final day of The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":524150,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,93886,31417,3332,5758,99,212845,235007,11385],"class_list":["post-524149","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-ludvig-aberg","tag-michael-thorbjornsen","tag-pga-tour","tag-scottie-scheffler","tag-sports","tag-the-players-championship","tag-tpc-sawgrass","tag-xander-schauffele"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524149","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=524149"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/524149\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/524150"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=524149"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=524149"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=524149"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}