No one caught Scottie Scheffler on Sunday.
Scheffler rolled to an absolutely dominant five-shot win at The Players Championship on Sunday after tearing up TPC Sawgrass to claim the PGA Tour’s major tournament. It marked the sixth win of his career and pushed him past Jon Rahm again to regain first place in the Official World Golf Rankings.
Scheffler is now only the third golfer in history to hold both the Players title and Masters Championship title at the same time, joining Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods.
Starting with a two-shot lead, Scheffler took his time on Sunday morning to get going. He even bogeyed his third hole of the day, leaving the door open. But by the eighth, Scheffler went all out.
Scheffler chipped for a birdie on the par-3 while in a bunker on the green. That led to a wild run of five birdies in a row that pushed his lead to six shots at its peak.
At that point, Scheffler was just cruising to the finish. He made five pars and a bogey in his final six holes of the day to post a final round of 69.
Scheffler built up his lead on what ended up being an incredibly long Saturday. Scheffler had to complete eight holes on Saturday morning to complete his second round, which was halted early due to rain. He then went 7-under in his third round to reach 14-under on the week, giving him a two-shot lead over Min Woo Lee after playing 26 holes on the day.
While others were close by, no one else in the top-10 in the world was within seven shots of him. That opened the door for Scheffler to overtake Jon Rahm—who withdrew due to illness on Friday—at No. 1 in the OWGR.
“I would much rather win the tournament than return to the number 1 in the world,” Scheffler said after Saturday. “So that’s going to be my focus going into tomorrow, just going out and playing a solid round of golf.”
That’s exactly what he did. Luckily for Scheffler, the win also came with a $4.5 million check and a return to No. 1.
Lee, after making a birdie on his first hole, tripled the fourth on a shot into the water. That pushed him back three shots, nearly ending his chances of taking his first career Tour win. He finished with a 4-over 76, dropping him back to T6. Tyrrell Hatton finished second after posting a 7-under 65 which was the best round of the day and lifted him 24 pots in the standings. Viktor Hovland and Tom Hoge tied for third place at 10-under.
Scheffler has now won six times in his career, all in his last 27 starts. He has already won twice this season, with the first coming at the WM Phoenix Open last month. That win returned him to No. 1 in the OWGR, though Rahm overtook him the following week at The Genesis Invitational. In his 10 starts this season, Scheffler has only finished worse than T12 once.
