In crosswind conditions, 20 km/h, which is not a hurricane, thick rough as his mentor Arnold Palmer wanted and extreme hardness on the very fast greens, Scottie Scheffler took the victory in the tournament that baptizes the memory of ‘The King’.
It was such a demanding day that the Golf Channel commentator He scored 98 strokes in the round that would sign a handicap of 7. The best players in the world could not beat the monstrous Bay Hill. Only four golfers played under par. Overall they did it at 75.5, three and a half shots above what the yardage book indicates. The 25-year-old American won ahead of the triple H: Hovland, Hatton, outstanding with a 69, and Horschel.
Scheffler, the player so far of 2022, two wins in nine weeks, the previous one at the Phoenix Open, with which he debuted on the PGA Tour, only needed par for the course. He was the only one who fulfilled it among the applicants of the last two games. The inexperienced Talor Gooch went to 77, with 43 (+7) in the first nine; the local Horschel, who threw a putt on the last hole to try to tie the tie, at 75, the brave Hovland, who also did it and fell a meter short, at 74.
Woodland’s goof
In the last hour and a half of the game, the championand new leader of the Fedex Cup, only lost his head for a moment, with the momentary appearance of Gary Woodland (73), fifth at the end after a disastrous finish with +3 in the last two holes.
Woodland came under pressure to the 16th hole, the last of the par 5s. Long holes are the only option offered by Bay Hill, the course that Palmer invented and that is a godsend for golf. He was one shot behind Scheffler, already leading with the -5 winner, with four holes to go.
Gary played a bad first shot, to the left, into the woods. But long. And that made it possible for him not to have trees ahead. Those who protect the green did not bother him. You just had to get around the lake. In two, he reached the green, about 7 meters from the hole. He had played this stretch 23 times in his career and he had never gotten an eagle. The statistic evaporated forever.
The course caught him on the next hole, the 17th (par 3). He went into the bunker and took a horrible hit that didn’t come out of the sand. He dispatched the hole with a double bogey that took him away from victory. One less. It was a question of Hovland, Scheffler or Horschel, who, as he did not birdie the 16th hole, lost steam.
In the other bunker on the 17th hole, the one on the right, buried his Hovland illusions. She stayed downhill for him and put the stick in to do what he could. The ball shot across the green. From 17 meters, he had enough with the bogey. Scheffler, next to him, had enough with the pairs. They were agonizing but he signed them all. The five under par was the highest win since Jon Rahm took the BMW Championship at -4 in 2020.
There was no option to the tiebreaker, which would have given him Hatton the opportunity for a historic victory. No one in PGA history since Kenny Knox at the 1986 Honda Classic (80 strokes in the third round) had been able to win a tournament with 78 strokes or more in one round like the Englishman crashed on Saturday.
Again the short game…
Jon Rahm repeated the 74 on Saturday and finished seventeenth. It is the second consecutive tournament in which he is out of the top 10. If in golf there was no need to kick, he would have won the tournament, but outside of fantasy, the world number 1 paid for what he is suffering with the short game. In the final round, he only made two birdies, made three holes to three putts and only his consistency kept him in a middle position. Next week at TPC, with the No. 1 defense on the line, he’ll have to tune up the fiddle.
Sergio García, meanwhile, also dispatched on Sunday with 74 hits. He made life difficult in the rough of the 6th hole, double bogey, and then he went against the current. Three birdies and three bogeys
