Scheffler, the world’s No. 1 player who won at Harbour Town two years ago, was seven shots behind going into the third round and surged into contention with five birdies through six holes.<\/p>\n
He finished by smashing a 9-iron from 196 with the wind at his back to 10 feet for a final birdie and a 7-under 64, enough to briefly tie Fitzpatrick for the lead.<\/p>\n
Just not for long. Fitzpatrick rolled in a 25-foot birdie putt from off the green at the par-3 14th. He was right of the green with his second shot on the par-5 15th and chipped in for eagle to restore the margin to three shots.<\/p>\n
Editor’s Picks Fitzpatrick, the 2023 winner of the RBC Heritage, closed with three pars to reach 17-under 196.<\/p>\n He started another warm, breezy day with a one-shot lead over Viktor Hovland<\/a> (73), four clear of everyone else. Fitzpatrick goes into the final round with four players within four shots of the lead, starting with the No. 1 player in the world.<\/p>\n “Good to be back in the tournament,” Scheffler said. “I was a little bit behind the 8-ball going into today, but had a nice round to put myself back in position.”<\/p>\n So did Brian Harman<\/a>, who recovered from a slow start for the second straight week. The former British Open champion opened with a 71 and had his best score ever at Harbour Town with a 63 that left him four behind along with Si Woo Kim<\/a> (66) and Sepp Straka<\/a> (67).<\/p>\n Even before Fitzpatrick teed off, Scheffler was making a move – a pair of birdies in the 6-foot range, a pair of birdies from the greenside bunkers on the par 5s and a 15-foot birdie putt on No. 6.<\/p>\n “It felt like I had already gotten myself into contention there,” Scheffler said, figuring the last group had not even started.<\/p>\n Fitzpatrick went long on the first hole and left and long on the third, both times failing to save par. He made another bogey on the par-3 seventh, and by then an entire cast of contenders were back in the tournament.<\/p>\n Scheffler, Harman and Kim each had at least a share of the lead at one point. Harman closed out his round by holing a bunker shot on the par-3 17th.<\/p>\n “Just tried to keep the pedal down. It’s going to take a low number to win,” Harman said.<\/p>\n But it started to turn for Fitzpatrick when he ripped driver on the 315-yard ninth, the ball landing on the front of the bunker and hopping onto the green to about 75 feet away, leading to a two-putt birdie. Three holes later, he converted a 10-foot birdie putt and was on his way.<\/p>\n Scheffler and Fitzpatrick played together the opening two rounds, and the Englishman put seven shots between them to the 36-hole lead.<\/p>\n Scheffler, coming off a runner-up finish in the Masters, figured he would need one of his best rounds to at least have a chance. He also needed a little help. His 64 was the best score of the 14 players ahead of him, and all but three of those players did no better than 68.<\/p>\n “Fitzpatrick goes out today and shoots 64, that’s going to make things really hard for me,” Scheffler said. “You need a tiny bit of help, but I can’t control what those guys are going to do. If somebody shows up and shoots 28 under on this golf course, sometimes you just get beat.<\/p>\n “So going into today I was just going to do my best and see where that left me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apr 18, 2026, 07:07 PM ET HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. — Matt Fitzpatrick had a slow start that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":593098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-593097","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\/593097","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=593097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/593098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=593097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=593097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=593097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/r1643530_1296x1296_1-1.jpg&w=130&h=130&scale=crop&location=center.jpeg\")
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