Scottie Scheffler, the 2022 Masters Champion, shot a 6-under 66 that puts him one shot behind DeChambeau on the leaderboard, but it’s hard to find someone around Augusta National believing in Bryson DeChambeau over Scheffler.
Such is the state of the Texan’s game — we watched him win the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship, and finish second at the Houston Open, in his last three starts.
“I felt like today I just did a really good job of — (caddie Ted Scott), I would say, did a really good job of kind of guessing the wind correctly, if that makes sense. You know, we stole a few shots on the par 3s, I felt like, and then I played the par 5s well,” Scheffler said.
That low scores like this were possible seemed unlikely 24 hours ago, when the forecast was so poor.
“When I was walking up to the first tee, I was fairly surprised with how many people were under par already. Going into today with the forecast the way it was supposed to be, and I’ve played this tournament once before in some pretty high winds, and it’s an extremely challenging golf course,” Scheffler said.
Something of a budding storyline this week is Scheffler admitting that he would withdraw from the tournament if his wife, Meredith, went into labor with their first child. Her due date is closer to the end of the month. Scheffler seemed to be generally unconcerned about the possibility on Thursday.
“Maybe I should be more concerned,” Scheffler said, before admitting the nursery is not ready. “… We haven’t seen any of the early signs. But pregnancy is weird. It can happen at any time. Yeah, open lines of communication and she can get ahold of me if she needs to.”
