It’s been nine years since a player won two majors in a row after Jordan Speith in 2015, but the odds are very short on world number one and recent Masters winner Scottie Scheffler reprising the feat at the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Kentucky. Not only was Scheffler dominant at Augusta National, it was also his second consecutive win and he stands a good chance of making five titles from six starts on Sunday.
Two men though stand in the dominant Texan’s way, and both have carried excellent recent form to Kentucky. World number two Rory McIlroy is two from two in his most recent outings with wins at the Zurich Classic in New Orleans and the Wells Fargo Championship in Charlotte, North Carolina. On Sunday he decimated the field and even had the luxury of a double-bogey finish to still win by five strokes from Xander Schauffele.
The Tokyo Olympic champion later remarked, “He's Rory McIlroy, you know? He hits it 350 yards in the air downwind and he has shorter clubs into firm greens than anyone else. When he's on, he's on.”
As a by the way, McIlroy’s last victory in a major came at this event, and on the very same course 10 years ago. At the moment, he and Scheffler are the bookies’ favourites too for the Wanamaker Trophy, at ridiculously short odds.
The other potential hurdle to Scheffler’s seemingly unstoppable progress is LIV Golf star and defending champion Brooks Koepka, also entering the PGA Championship on the back of his win at Singapore two weeks ago.
The five-time major winner not only has form and pedigree on his side but also the game to go toe-to-toe with the best and come out on top, as he showed against Cameron Smith at Sentosa, “It’s all starting to come around,” said Koepka, who became the first active LIV Golf player to win a major with his victory last year at Oak Hill. “I like the way things are trending,” he added after becoming the first on the league’s roster to win four individual LIV Golf titles.
And then there is Tiger Woods. Having navigated his way over four days around the hilly Augusta National course, the 15-time major winner showed that a bucket load of injuries notwithstanding, he still has the game to go the distance. Woods also knows he is quite some way from being any sort of title threat but students of the game still remember his memorable playoff win in the 2000 PGA Championship at Valhalla where the decisive putt over Bob May is now part of the game’s folklore.
At 48, Tiger knows there is little chance of yet another miraculous performance, but the memory of 2000 is clearly still quite fresh. “This is a big golf course (7.609 yards, par-71), and if you get in the rough here, yeah, things could get a little bit sore, but if I drive it well and do the things I need to do and what I did 24 years ago, hopefully it works,” he noted at the pre-event press conference.
Woods went 73-72-82-77 at Augusta and finished dead last of 60 and admitted on Tuesday that four straight rounds is a stretch for his much-repaired physique. “Yeah, I can still hit shots. It's getting around is more of the difficulty that I face, day-to-day and the recovery of pushing myself either in practice or in competition days. You saw it at Augusta. I was there after two days and didn't do very well on the weekend.”
His legion of fans though will be hoping otherwise. Also in the 156-strong field are Indian-Americans Sahith Theegala and Akshay Bhatia, who have been turning in notable performances in the last two years and will be closely followed both in India and the US. Theegala is ranked 12th in the world and Bhatia 34th. The former has one PGA Tour title to his credit and the left-handed Bhatia twice as many and are crowd favourites for their aggressive style of play.
Bhatia tees off alongside Bryson DeChambeau and Tommy Fleetwood for the first two rounds, while Theegala is paired with Tony Finau and Tyrell Hatton. The PGA Championship will be available live in India on the ITT platform Fan Code, from 11.30 pm on Thursday and Friday, and from 10,30 pm over the weekend.