Scheffler's creeping brilliance defines PGA moving day with McIlroy a silent partner
HEAD AND SHOULDERS: Scottie Scheffler of the United States looks on from the 16th tee during the third round of the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow Country Club on May 17, 2025 in Charlotte, North Carolina. (Photo by Jared C. Tilton/Getty Images)
Eight sprawling palatial homes skirt along the 15th fairway at Quail Hollow, each estimated to be set you back north of $10m. Another six more reserved, easier-on-the-wallet piles of brick hug the green.
On the balcony of one of the latter white-washed cluster stands Rory McIlroy, peering out on to the par five and holding the Wanamaker Trophy aloft. The photoshopped, cardboard cutout version of the Holywood man would have been one put together and perched up there in hope and maybe expectation too. This corner of Charlotte, after all, had been his happiest hunting ground.
When the 2025 PGA Championship wraps up here on Sunday evening however the vision won’t become a reality. Why? For many, many reasons. Scottie Scheffler’s Saturday masterclass of creeping brilliance looms as the most definitive. The World No.1 made moving day his with an effortless inevitability, strangling Quail Hollow’s Green Monster finish by playing the last five holes in five under to take a three-shot lead on the field at 11-under.
What a shot by Scottie Scheffler! #PGAChamp pic.twitter.com/heP0QDoReW
— PGA Championship (@PGAChampionship) May 17, 2025
The masses walked out of here and into their Saturday nights with a consensus: a third Major feels like the Texan’s to take home Sunday afternoon. As he was rolling in his seventh birdie of the day on 18, McIlroy was making his way silently into the clubhouse having refused to speak to the media for a third-straight day. This time that felt fitting though: McIlroy had been moving day’s silent partner.
Another one of the reasons he won’t be lifting the real Wanamaker sat in the garden of a neighbouring house down the hill from that cardboard Rory on the 15th. It was there where McIlroy’s drive had ended up, out of luck, out of bounds, out of contention.
McIlroy had just carded his first birdie of a severely delayed moving day in North Carolina on the 14th. He stepped up on the next tee seven shots back of the leaders staring all the way down a very scoreable hole and maybe just maybe thinking ‘I’m still in this’.
He rocketed a 350-yard drive out there into the hot Saturday afternoon air where it met a mercifully cooling breeze that was rapidly becoming a wind. It started fading right and he peered after it with concern, glancing back at the marshal who uses a bright yellow flag to signal where the ball is headed. The helper’s hand position was belatedly moving right with increasing energy. The ball landed on the cart path, bounced and cleared a perimeter fence before landing in a manicured, very valuable garden.
Driving has been a crapshoot here in a place where it needs to be steady and solid. Being forced to switch out his big stick on the eve of the tournament due to what the PGA had deemed a non-conforming head had clearly taken a toll but in his first Major since completing the career set, McIlroy was fitful in myriad ways. This 14th to 15th swing was a microcosm of it all.
Momentum had been so bloody hard to find in these hills. McIlroy threw it away as soon as he’d finally found it. Not his day and not his week. From there his back nine was barely visible. He was out there somewhere but the eyes focused on other parts of the course where pockets of energy and noise pulsated.
For a lot of Saturday, the third round had belonged to a medley of men. For a time it looked like an army of the game’s heavy hitters were going to take control. World No.1 Scheffler, reigning US Open champion Bryson DeChambeau and two-time Major winner Jon Rahm all surged up the leaderboard as surprise halfway leader Jhonattan Vegas dropped down. Korea’s Si Woo Kim, never boring, was making a run too. Ryder Cup vets Keegan Bradley and Tony Finau were feeding off the energy. A much-maligned and weather-impacted week had found a sweet, spicy spot at last.
Yet there were less heralded hopefuls climbing back in among the big names. This, after all, has traditionally been the Major for minor characters. Alex Noren, the veteran Swede playing just his second tournament after returning from a slew of injury troubles put on a putting clinic and carded the day’s second- best round, a sparkling 66 which gave him a clubhouse lead on 8-under. One shot further back was Davis Riley, the world’s No.100, who found five birdies from the 8th onwards to card a 66. France’s Matthieu Pavon and Vegas too were refusing to fully fade.
As the course clocks ticked towards 6pm some patrons who’d had enough of the stinging Saturday sun which followed the morning’s angry storms made their way for the exits. Fools. The matinee show was about to go box office as the world’s best player stepped into centre stage with laughably minimal fuss.
This is what Scheffler does: makes the cruelly difficult look all too easy, pedestrian even. When the Green Monster bit DeChambeau hard, we knew all about it. The histrionics told the story before the score graphics do. DeChambeau bogeyed the 16th and then stepped up to the par-3 17th and got his distances all wrong to send his ball into the water after a couple of bounces along the wall. Double-bogey five sent him tumbling down.
Behind him, mere minutes later, Scheffler made his move with arguably the shot of the week so far. At the reachable par-four 14th where it had so briefly looked like McIlroy might get moving, the Texan hit fast forward. From 304 yards back he boomed his three wood and commanded the ball into two feet and nine inches. Eagle. Nine-under. Outright lead. See ye all later.
Birdies at 15, 17 and 18 followed and there he sat, atop it all. Imperiousness shouldn’t look this easy.
When he stepped off the 18th and into a TV interview, he immediately began coughing and spluttering. “Sorry, I’m just nervous,” he wheezed. Scottie’s got jokes. (Charlotte is, in fact, a red zone for pollen allergies.)
This week last year Scheffler’s PGA Championship was defined by photos of him in an orange jumpsuit. Suddenly and serenely Saturday evening, it felt altogether inevitable that this year’s edition will be marked by altogether different images and not of the cardboard cutout variety.
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