Scottie Scheffler backed off his swing. He had heard his name, though he wasn’t being called for.
As has been much discussed this week, this Open Championship has all types of turmoil. There’s the internal out of bounds just yards to the right of a pair of fairways. There are the pot bunkers. There’s the diabolical par-3 17th, which one caddie labeled a monstrosity. There’s everything else that makes links golf links golf — rough and wind and slopes and humps and bumps.
And on Saturday at Royal Liverpool, during the third round, Scheffler found something more. Or, to be clear, the world No. 1 heard it.
On the 510-yard, par-5 5th, Scheffler found the right side of the fairway with his tee shot on the dogleg left, and he had 237 yards left for his second shot. Ahead was a pot bunker in front of the green, and one to the left. Scheffler waggled his iron a few times.
Perhaps those previous three sentences, in some shape or form, are what he heard.
To Scheffler’s right was a large television screen, with analysts analyzing everything he had done and was about to do. He backed off his shot. It was … weird.
“Yeah, that was strange,” he said after his round. “I was standing over my shot and they had the TV going full volume over there and it was commentating my shot.
“So I heard my name in the distance and I was like, all right, I’ve got to back off. I’ve never heard a distraction like that before. Usually something that loud, it’s music or something. Hopefully they turn that down as the leaders get back there. It was very — I’ve never been so distracted by something like that before. It was pretty funny, just hearing your own name on the coverage.
“It was a weird moment for sure.”
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Notably, it was the second time this week that a player has called out hearing himself being called. On Thursday, after his first round, Max Homa said he could hear a nearby TV saying he was holding too much club for his shot into the par-5 18th.
“I don’t know if anybody has mentioned this before,” he said, “but you can hear the commentators on the broadcast from the big TV, and I was over the ball and one of them said, ‘This is too much club.’
“I did an absolutely awful job of not backing off because I knew it was too much club; that was the point.”
On Homa’s shot, he hit into the grandstands behind the hole, dropped, pitched on, two-putted and parred. And on Scheffler’s?
After laughing with caddie Ted Scott, he dumped his ball into the left bunker.
Which begs the question:
Did Scheffler hear the broadcast say to be wary of the sand?
“I didn’t hear, ‘Look out for the bunker,’” he said, “but it was so weird because I heard my name, and that definitely put me off for a minute there.
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“That was weird.”
We’ll end things here with one last Scheffler note. It’s a fun one.
After his second shot on 5, he birdied it by getting up and down from the bunker, and he finished with a one-over 72. It left him at four over through 54 holes — and 14 shots behind second-round leader Brian Harman, who had yet to start his third round.
But a reporter checked on something. Just to be sure.
“Can you still do it tomorrow?”
“Win? Unless a hurricane happens this afternoon.”
Scheffler laughed. He continued.
“A hurricane and then some I think is what it’s going to take for me. I’m just going to go out tomorrow and do my best and move my way up the leaderboard and try and have a good day.”
