The second big one of the season has been waiting for a crib. Today the PGA Championship starts in Valhalla (Kentucky) and until the last minute there was the question of whether the best player in the world, the number one in the rankingand great favorite, the American Scottie Scheffler, was going to participate. The reason was that the golfer and his wife, Meredith, were expecting the birth of his first child, and for the athlete there was no doubt that family came first. But the baby was born on Saturday and today everyone is looking at dad Scheffler, the great dominator of world golf in recent times, the current Masters champion.
Already in Augusta Scheffler played with one eye on the field and another around him. In a sanctuary that prohibits cell phones, Number One got special permission for a person on his team to follow him around the field with a device in his pocket, and thus notify him if Meredith was in labor. In that case, he assured, he would have left the tournament even if he came close to glory. He didn’t have to choose and Scheffler dominated the Masters, his second major and continuing a fabulous run this year. At 27 years old, the American has won four of the 10 tournaments in which he has participated (Arnold Palmer, Players, Masters and Heritage), has been among the top 10 in another five and only dropped to 17th place in The American Express .
His advantage in the world ranking is so large over second, Rory McIlroy, and third, Xander Schauffele, that it is reminiscent of the tyranny of Tiger Woods. The Northern Irishman lands after winning the Wells Fargo last week, but he resigns himself to fighting from today in the PGA (from 2:30 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. at Movistar Golf) for second place if his recent father does not let up.
Fatherhood also occupies Jon Rahm, although with quite a few calendar pages ahead of him. The Basque is expecting his third child in the last week of September, just when the Spanish Open is being held. That is, his competition is up in the air.
The Basque appears in Valhalla along with two other Spaniards, David Puig and Adrián Otaegui, and with the challenge of erasing the bitter taste of the Masters. In the event in which he defended the green jacket, Rahm was never in the race for the title and finished in 45th place, 20 strokes behind Scheffler. “I didn’t have a great performance, although this season I have been playing good golf,” he analyzes. His service record says that he has not had a drink since that Masters that he celebrated on April 9, 2023, 403 days ago, the longest drought since he took off his professional career in June 2016. Neither in the rest of the previous season on the American circuit nor this course enrolled in the Saudi League has he called bingo, although he is the only golfer with seven top ten in the seven stops of the year in LIV: third in Mayakoba, eighth in Las Vegas , fifth in Jeddah, eighth in Hong Kong, fourth in Miami, third in Adelaide and tenth in Singapore.
The PGA is played on the course and also off it. Rahm runs into his former PGA Tour colleagues again after admitting friction following his departure to the enemy. “Some people won’t look me in the face,” he said in Augusta. The Basque, as published by the Tengolf website, has already received financial fines from the European circuit for joining LIV events that coincided with DP World Tour events: 75,000 euros per week. Waiting for a peace that does not come, he will reach for his wallet while he continues building bridges. “I still support the American circuit, I am not on the other side. I hope to play there again. The PGA Tour has given me a lot and has allowed me to be who I am, I am not going to go against them,” Rahm said this week. And he made a wish: “A world tour with the best in the world together. We have the opportunity to take golf to another level.”
In the background of the saber rattling, the imposing figure of Tiger Woods (48 years old) returns to the scene after his suffering Masters. After achieving the record of 24 consecutive cuts made at Augusta, the champion of 15 majors recorded his worst result in the tournament, 16 strokes over par. Which version of the Tiger will be seen in Valhalla is a mystery.
Groups and departure times of the first day.
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