Scottie Scheffler Starts Strong, Stays Steady With First-Round 67

The second competitive shot that Scottie Scheffler struck as a father found the bottom of the cup from 167 yards. The eagle start for the World No. 1 at the PGA Championship showed that there were no remnants of rust for the man who has not played in the past three weeks.

It was silly to think that there ever would have been in the first place. Scheffler has won four times this year, including the Masters and The Players Championship, and only one person has finished better than him in the last two months.

Following the 2 at No. 1 – which he said was a “stock 9-iron” – Scheffler made four more birdies and two uncharacteristic bogeys the rest of his round to shoot four-under 67 to end tied for 12th place, five shots behind Xander Schauffele, who shot a PGA Championship record 62.

“There's nothing I can do, Xander went out and played a great round this morning and I'm not really going to worry about trying to shoot 9 under,” Scheffler said. “I'm just going to go out and try to hit good shots and play my own game.”

More: Xander Schauffele Shoots 62, Sets PGA Championship Scoring Record

The first birdie of the afternoon for Scheffler same at the fourth hole from 13 feet, but he gave it back on the fifth hole when he was unable to get up and down from the right, front greenside bunker.

Scheffler went birdie, bogey, birdie on Nos. 13-15. A wedge from 78 yards on the 13th to inside 4 feet was one of his better shots of the day, a missed 4-footer for par on the 14th was one of his worst and then he bounced back with a last birdie from inside 12 feet on the par-4 15th hole. He had another look at birdie from 14 feet on the par-5 closing hole but could not get the ball to drop.

“I felt like there was a couple things I can clean up going into tomorrow, but overall today was a solid round,” he said.

Schauffele isn’t the only person Scheffler will have to contend with over the next three days at Valhalla. Tony Finau (65), Rory McIlroy (66) and Collin Morikawa (66) are all above him on the leaderboard. Brooks Koepka matched Scheffler’s 67.

Check out the leaderboard from the 2024 PGA Championship here.