{"id":649691,"date":"2026-05-18T04:31:09","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T04:31:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/649691\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T04:31:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T04:31:09","slug":"this-pga-championship-showed-that-scottie-scheffler-has-real-rivals-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/649691\/","title":{"rendered":"This PGA Championship Showed That Scottie Scheffler Has Real Rivals Again"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. \u2013 Aaron Rai is such a fundamentally nice human being<\/a> that he started half of his PGA Championship press conference answers with, \u201cThat\u2019s a great question.\u201d Rai earned the Wanamaker Trophy with a brilliant and complete performance, but I don\u2019t think he would mind if I ask one question about somebody else:<\/p>\n

Is the gap between world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and the rest of the field starting to shrink?<\/p>\n

The last two players to hold the No. 1 ranking before Scheffler both finished ahead of him this week. Jon Rahm finished at 6 under to tie for second. Rory McIlroy finished at 4 under. Scheffler finished 2 under.<\/p>\n

This was one week. Scheffler has had an outrageously successful few years. There is no conversation about the best player in the world right now: It is Scheffler. He won two majors last year, contends in pretty much all of them, and he should be the favorite at the U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills next month.<\/p>\n

But if McIlroy and Rahm keep playing like this, the conversation changes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What a difference a year makes<\/p>\n

Eighteen months ago, McIlroy had a majors-winning problem and Rahm had a major-performance problem. But since the start of 2025, McIlroy has won as many majors as Scheffler<\/a> (two), and finished ahead of him in three of six majors. Rahm took some time to piece his game back together, but this week, he looked like Rahm again<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t just that Rahm almost won. He almost won without really ever looking comfortable on the greens.<\/p>\n

\u201cI played really good golf,\u201d Rahm said. \u201cThat’s the only way to look at it. Just wish I’d have done better with the speed of the greens. Just couldn’t seem to get it to the hole, and that’s the reason why I didn’t hole any more putts.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rahm does not need a hot putting week to win a major; even when he blew away the field at the 2023 Masters<\/a>, his putting was merely very good. McIlroy used to need his A game to win majors (and when he had it, he blew the field away.) But he won the 2025 Masters<\/a> despite several horrific holes, and he won this year\u2019s Masters without his best ball-striking. This week, McIlroy had one terrible driving day, on Thursday. He shot 74. Yet he was still in serious contention on the back nine on Sunday.<\/p>\n

Scheffler\u2019s worst golf is much better than everybody else\u2019s worst. He rarely has a bad round, let alone a bad tournament. Scheffler has made 74 consecutive cuts, 51 more than any other PGA Tour player\u2014and when he has a chance to lift a trophy, he succeeds as often as anybody could reasonably hope.<\/p>\n

\"Jon<\/p>\n

Rahm tied for second at Aronimink. | Bill Streicher-Imagn Images<\/p>\n

But McIlroy\u2019s best golf might better than Scheffler\u2019s best. When he is on, he bombs drive after drive in the fairway, farther than just about anybody else, giving himself an enormous advantage. (McIlroy averaged 361 yards off the tee Sunday, best among contenders. Rahm averaged 360.) A few years ago, McIlroy\u2019s wedge game held him back. That is no longer the case.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI lean on my ability to get the ball in the hole, which is honestly better than it ever has been\u2014my chipping and putting and scrambling,\u201d McIlroy said.<\/p>\n

Even though McIlroy did not win this week, he showed the same championship mentality that was so impressive at Augusta National last month. He did not compound mistakes. When he got into trouble, he got out of it. He played like he expected to win\u2014not because he was at his best, but because he realizes now that he doesn\u2019t have to be at his best to win.<\/p>\n

McIlroy arrived at the par-5 16th at 4 under par, knowing he needed to get to at least 5 under and probably 6 under to have a chance to win. He hit his drive into the right rough. His second shot curved right. From the ball flight, it looked like there was something under the ball that affected it, but that\u2019s a price you pay for being in the rough.<\/p>\n

The PGA Championship was slipping away from McIlroy.<\/p>\n

At that moment, a fan yelled \u201cUSA!\u201d<\/p>\n

McIlroy turned and looked as angry as I have ever seen him.<\/p>\n

\u201cShut the f\u2014 up,\u201d McIlroy said through clenched teeth.<\/p>\n

He pointed at the fan and had security remove him.<\/p>\n

I had no problem with McIlroy doing that. This isn\u2019t an Eagles game or the Ryder Cup. The guy crossed the line. But it was quite a contrast from McIlroy at last year\u2019s PGA. Then, he was still in a celebratory Masters fog. This week, he came to win the Wanamaker<\/a>, no matter where his drives ended up.<\/p>\n

Rahm said Sunday that, \u201cAs far as I’m concerned, to be in the mix again and hit it as good as I did and perform as well as I did this weekend, it’s been a great week.\u201d I\u2019m sure he believes that. But I don\u2019t think he really felt it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rahm seemed annoyed that he didn\u2019t win. Part of what makes him great is belief; even when he was struggling, he fully expected to be the best player in the world again. He is often frustrated but never intimidated.<\/p>\n

Rahm was not at his best, but he was almost good enough.<\/p>\n

McIlroy was also not at his best, but he was also almost good enough.<\/p>\n

Aaron Rai won the week. But the competition to win this era is very much on.<\/p>\n

More Golf from Sports Illustrated\"\"Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEWTOWN SQUARE, Pa. \u2013 Aaron Rai is such a fundamentally nice human being that he started half of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649692,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-649691","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\/649691","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=649691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}