Scottie Scheffler shuts down easy claims in chase | Golf News

Scottie Scheffler emphasised the distinctive challenges of TPC River Highlands just before practically making historical past with a sub-60 spherical at the Travelers Championship.

After enduring the punishing situations at Oakmont, Scheffler arrived at the PGA Tour’s premier Signature Event of the season as the person to beat. As the reigning champion, he had set a exceptional precedent final yr with a 22-under par efficiency, finally securing victory over Tom Kim in a playoff.

Kicking off this yr’s occasion, Scheffler picked up proper where he left off, carding an eight-under 62 to tie for the lead with Austin Eckroat after the first day. The pleasure peaked when Scheffler was on the brink of breaking 60, but a bogey on the seventeenth dampened what may have been an even more extraordinary spherical.

Before his spectacular begin, Scheffler addressed the murmurs about River Highlands’ stage of issue, asserting that golf is about mastering whatever course is in play and suggesting that spectators typically overemphasize the importance of the ultimate rating.

“Golf’s funny in that sense,” Scheffler remarked. “People, when they watch golf, it’s not like other sports where you want us to look like y’all when we play golf. It’s one of those funny things.

“You watch the NBA, and you are like, I want they could not dunk. I want they have been scoring much less. I want their capturing share was decrease on 3-pointers. If you watch tennis, you are like, man, I want the ball was going slower so they seem like me on the market enjoying tennis. It’s not like that.

“As much as some people want us to feel like them, professional golf is different than amateur golf. We get a lot of time to prepare to go out and play. The guys out here are really good at golf. If you stand here on the driving range and watch a range session, that ball doesn’t go offline very often.

“I believe typically, particularly in this day and age, people get method too caught up in the profitable rating being what is a correct check. I believe a correct check is sweet photographs being rewarded and unhealthy photographs being punished. I believe this is one of the best golf programs for that.

“There’s opportunity out there, and there’s also punishment. You look at the closing stretch; 15, if you hit a good shot, you’ve got a birdie opportunity. If you try to bail out right, you’re going to be in a bunker short right of the green and have a 40-yard bunker shot, a hard shot.

“16, if you hit a good shot, you are going to have a good look at birdie. If you bail out and go long, it is a powerful chip down the hill. 17, you hit the golf green, you’ve gotten a probability to hit in there close to the pin. If you hit it in the left tough, you in all probability cannot get to the inexperienced. That’s what we glance for in golf programs, in phrases of you need good photographs to be rewarded and unhealthy photographs to be punished. It’s as easy as that.”

He added: “The profitable rating, I believe people get method too caught up in. I’m not saying essentially that even par is a unhealthy profitable rating. Some weeks, just like the U.S. Open, you hit two great photographs and you are going to get rewarded with a par. That’s superb. That’s good too.

“Across the board, the way we get tested in professional golf is very good. We play different types of golf courses, different types of grass, we play different types of winning scores. We just see different tests, and I think not one is better than the other.

“The most irritating factor for me when I play a golf match is when you see good photographs not getting rewarded and unhealthy photographs not being punished correctly. That’s all we glance for. Do we care that 22-under wins this week? No.

“I played good last year, and if they somehow change it to 12-under by making the pins in silly spots and doing things to trick up the golf course, what we want is a fair test. I think having birdies at the end sometimes is a pretty exciting finish. That’s really all there is to it.”