Scottie Scheffler lurking six strokes behind co-leaders Ben Griffin, Matt Schmid at Colonial
Coming off his third major victory at the PGA Championship a week ago, Scheffler began the day 10 strokes back before a 6-under 64 that got him to 7 under and within six strokes. He would have been closer if not for three bogeys his last seven holes. But, with another big round on Sunday, he still has a chance to become the first player since
Dustin Johnson
in 2017 to win in three starts in a row.
Advertisement
Robert MacIntyre
and
Lucas Glover
also shot 64. MacIntyre was in a tie for fourth with
Nick Hardy
and
Akshay Bhatia
at 8 under.
Advertisement
Scheffler was on the wrong end of one of the biggest comebacks at Colonial, three years ago when
Sam Burns
overcame a seven-shot deficit in the final round and beat his good friend on playoff hole. That matched
Nick Price's
record seven-shot comeback in 1994, when he caught
Scott Simpson
and won on the first extra hole.
Griffin and Schmid both had birdies on the first three holes Saturday to get to 14 under and quickly create some separation from the rest of the field. All three birdie putts by Griffin were 7 feet or less, while Schmid had a 40-footer at the 461-yard third hole.
They remained tied until Griffin's approach at No. 5 adjacent to the Trinity River was out of bounds and resulted in a double-bogey 6. He then missed the green with his approach at the sixth hole before two-putting from 14 feet for bogey.
Griffin got two strokes back with birdies at No. 8 and at No. 10 with a 35-footer. That got him to 13 under, and Schmid dropped back to that when he drove into the right rough and then hit into a bunker on way to a bogey at the 637-yard par-5 11th.
Scheffler, who teed off more than two hours before the co-leaders, was at 8 under after his eagle at No. 11, where he got on the green in two shots and made the 15-foot putt. That followed consecutive birdies as Nos. 9 and 10, and starting the back nine with an approach to 2½ feet.
But back-to-back bogeys followed after Scheffler hit tee shots into bunkers at Nos. 12 and 13. He got those strokes back with birdies at Nos. 16 and 17, only to miss the fairway at No. 18 to finish with another bogey.
Advertisement
The only player to win the Byron Nelson and Colonial in the same season was
Ben Hogan
in 1946. Scheffler earlier this month won his beloved hometown CJ Cup Byron Nelson when matching the PGA Tour's 72-hole scoring record at 31-under 253 for an eight-stroke win.
Foursome leads Senior PGA
Retief Goosen
and
Angel Cabrera
were among those tied for the lead at 5-under along with
Jason Caron
and
Phillip Archer
through three rounds of the Senior PGA Championship.
The star-studded leaderboard at Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Md., also includes
Vijay Singh
,
Stewart Cink
and
Padraig Harrington
. Golfers within two strokes going into the final round have combined to win 13 major championships. But some of the best play at the PGA Tour Champions major this week has come from some more unheralded competitors, including Archer and Caron.
'The people up there are the people that have a lot of experience,' Cabrera said. 'Most of them have been in many majors, and you can see that.'
Goosen has two US Open championships on his resume and Cabrera one of those to go along with the 2009 Masters. Harrington won the British Open in 2007 and '08 and Cink in '09, while Singh has two PGA Championship victories and another in the Masters.
Bae leads in Mexico by one
Jenny Bae
started with three straight birdies and had a one-shot lead that could have been larger except for a soft finish Saturday in the Mexico Riviera Maya Open in Playa del Carmen.
Bae didn't make another birdies after the third hole. What held her back were having to settle for pars on easy scoring holes, and then closing with a bogey when it took her two shots to get out of the crushed coral left of the green on the par-5 18th.
Advertisement
Bae was at 7-under 209, and the LPGA rookie faces a big test Sunday — along with just about everyone else chasing her — in a bid for her first LPGA victory.
'I didn't finish as well as I wanted to, but that's OK,' Bae said. 'Just tells me that I need to fight more the last 18 holes.'
The El Camaleon course at Mayakoba was set up for scoring, with the tees moved up on the par-4 17th to make it reachable with a fairway metal, and the par-5 closing hole.
Yahui Zhang
of China finished birdie-birdie for a 68 and was at 6-under 210, along with
Chisato Iwai
of Japan, who also birdied the last two holes.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Rockies' Scottie Scheffler quip after ending 57-series sweep drought
The post Rockies' Scottie Scheffler quip after ending 57-series sweep drought appeared first on ClutchPoints. Can you believe it? The Colorado Rockies have swept the Miami Marlins for their first sweep in 57 different series. The drought is finally over. Advertisement Alongside the Chicago White Sox, the Rockies have been one of the worst teams in professional sports over the last two seasons. It won't be getting better over the next few years either. However, sweeping an opponent is a great feeling, and nobody can take that away from the players. Before the series started against the Marlins, a comparison tweet was made on X, showing that Scottie Scheffler, the No. 1 golfer in the World, had as many wins since May 2 as the Rockies did at three. Well, now that the Rockies swept the Marlins, they decided to respond humorously. Of course, it is all in good fun. The PGA only plays Thursday-Sunday, but Scheffler is coming off his third win of the season at The Memorial. Scheffler doesn't seem to be slowing down anytime soon. His burst onto the scene has put him in conversations with Tiger Woods on multiple occasions. He has three career Major wins, including two at The Masters. The next Major is next week, and it will be the U.S. Open. Scheffler will aim to win that for the first time in his career. The Rockies are now 12-50. They will likely end the season with the most losses of all time, surpassing the Chicago White Sox and New York Mets at 120. Their schedule does not get any easier as they take on the Mets this weekend at Coors Field, who just swept them at Citi Field. That series is followed by meetings with the San Francisco Giants and Atlanta Braves. Advertisement It was not too long ago that the Rockies lost at Coors Field to the San Diego Padres by the score of 21-0. Since then, they have had wins against the Padres, New York Yankees, and Arizona Diamondbacks. It doesn't come often, but the Rockies can score some runs with a young offense. Related: Rockies go streaking with 2nd straight win over Marlins
Yahoo
5 hours ago
- Yahoo
Rory McIlroy a laughingstock after PGA Tour career worst
The post Rory McIlroy a laughingstock after PGA Tour career worst appeared first on ClutchPoints. Almost two months ago, Rory McIlroy completed his quest for a career grand slam, winning the Masters Tournament. That was already his third win of the 2025 season. McIlroy won both the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the PLAYERS Championship. It appeared his game had finally reached another level. Advertisement With six days until the U.S. Open tees off at Oakmont, that no longer seems the case. McIlroy flamed out at the PGA Championship and controversially opted not to speak to the media after each round. The Northern Irishman then skipped Jack Nicklaus' Memorial Tournament, which turned heads. This week, he was back on the course at the RBC Canadian Open, an event he has won twice. Not only did the familiarity with TPC Toronto not help get his game back on track, but he is having the worst tournament of his PGA Tour career. McIlroy carded a 1-over 71 on Thursday. That placed him below the projected cut line entering the second round but only by a couple of strokes. Then Friday happened. Advertisement With three holes to play, McIlroy sits at 9-over for the tournament. He is 150th in the field out of 153 golfers. The worst 36-hole finish of McIlroy's career was a tie for 142nd, per Underdog Golf. He will undoubtedly be heading home early. As his round played out, fans took to social media with some truly wild reactions. 'Rory McIlroy has (understandably) mentally checked out following his Masters win. Such a shame considering the form he was in pre-Augusta.,' one fan posted on X, formerly Twitter. Even Barstool Sports' Riggs could not contain himself. 'Rory F***ing McIlroy you are an emotional rollercoaster what is wrong with you I love you so much.' Advertisement Following four straight pars to begin his round, everything went off the rails on the par-4 5th. The five-time major champion carded a snowman eight for a quadruple bogey. From there, he bogeyed 8, 10, and 13 while double-bogeying the par-3 12th. He made his first birdie of the day on 15, prompting the most perfect troll reaction ever. Barring some double eagles coming in, this will mark the worst 36-hole finish of McIlroy's career, just in time for the U.S. Open. Related: Rockies' Scottie Scheffler quip after ending 57-series sweep drought
6 hours ago
McIlroy tumbles out of Canadian Open with a 78. Champ takes 2-shot lead into the weekend
CALEDON, Ontario -- Masters champion Rory McIlroy tumbled out of the RBC Canadian Open on Friday with his worst round in nearly a year, with Cameron Champ taking a two-stroke lead into the weekend in the final event before the U.S. Open. McIlroy shot an 8-over 78, making a mess of the fifth hole with a quadruple-bogey 8 in his highest score since also shooting 78 last year in the first round of the British Open. He had a double bogey on No. 11, four bogeys and two birdies. 'Of course it concerns me,' McIlroy said. 'You don't want to shoot high scores like the one I did today. Still, I felt like I came here obviously with a new driver thinking that that sort of was going to be good and solve some of the problems off the tee, but it didn't.' At 9 over, the two-time Canadian Open winner was 21 strokes behind Champ on the rain-softened North Course at TPC Toronto at Osprey Valley. 'Obviously, going to Oakmont next week, what you need to do more than anything else there is hit fairways," McIlroy said. "Still sort of searching for the sort of missing piece off the tee.' Champ had four birdies in a 68 in the morning a day after opening with a 62. He was at 12 under, playing the first 36 holes without a bogey. 'It's firmed up a little bit, but fairly similar to yesterday,' Champ said. 'The fairways I feel like were firming up a little bit. The greens slightly, but pretty close to how they were yesterday.' The three-time PGA Tour winner got one of the last spots in the field after being the eighth alternate Friday when the commitments closed. 'I definitely didn't think I was getting in,' Champ said. Andrew Putnam was second after a bogey-free 62 on the course hosting the event for the first time. He won the 2018 Barracuda Championship for his lone tour title. 'I hit a lot of fairways, hit a lot of good iron shots, too, and my putter was on fire,' Putnam said. 'Pretty much did everything right. Didn't really make many mistakes.' Thorbjorn Olesen of Denmark, tied for the first-round lead with Cristobal Del Solar after a 61, had a 70 drop into a tie for third at 9 under with Canadians Richard Lee (64) and Nick Taylor (65) and France's Victor Perez (65). Taylor won the 2023 event at Oakdale. 'Hung in there,' Taylor said. 'Making a birdie on the last was important to end the day nicely.' Del Solar was 8 under after a 71. Shane Lowry (68) also was 8 under with Ryan Fox (66), Jake Knapp (69), Sam Burns (66) and Matteo Manassero (65).
