CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Golf tournaments, though they play out in real life, often follow the plot line of a good mystery novel. The figures who seem important early on — your Ryan Gerards and Ryan Foxes — prove to be insignificant in the end. And yet, every round is filled with evidence for what is to come.
Take Agatha Christie’s novel Towards Zero — and take it seriously! An old golf club is central to the scene of the crime — Christie weaves the stories of a dozen characters, their upbringings, their professions and their desires into a specific, singular moment: a murder. Some characters mosey about aimlessly and ignorant; others could alter fate. Ultimately, one of them does the deed. But they were helped by the actions of another. Sound like a sport we all know and love?
What makes Christie so timelessly special as a storyteller is that she makes the evidence you learned at each stage feel so obviously crucial in the end. If you would have just paid closer attention, you would have seen it clear as day.
Viewed through that same lens, the outcome of the PGA Championship is still a mystery, despite the No. 1 player in the world leading by three. Let’s pretend Scottie Scheffler is not going to win. And, in fact, that there’s been evidence all along.
Scheffler has been lucky. The world’s best golfer is exactly who you’d think would win this tournament. Vegas has been telling you for weeks. And here he is, strangling the life out of it. But think back all the way to…Saturday on the 8th hole. Scheffler hit one of the worst tee balls he’s hit all season, trying to drive the green, wiping across the ball and sending it barreling out of bounds. Only a massive oak branch got in the way, sending it back into the fairway. Scheffler made an easy par from there; could have just as easily been a double.
Were you to stare hard enough through Hercule Poirot’s magnifying glass, you’d see Scheffler’s driver has been a bit inconsistent this week. And you’d see a helluva lot of big oak trees at Quail Hollow. He hit just six fairways Friday. He was low energy on Thursday, missing left a handful of times. Promise you won’t be shocked if he misses left to start his final round, okay?
Alex Noren is running on bliss. Two months ago, Noren was on injury leave and coaching softball. Now he’s in the final pairing! If he is a character in our mystery, he’s the aimless one.
Known for banging balls on the driving range until he developed blisters over his blisters, Noren had to put the clubs away for four months. Doctor’s orders.
Forget golf — Noren was studying baseball swings. That was his way of supporting his daughter’s team. When Noren tried that stick-and-ball sport, he hated the feeling of connecting anywhere but the sweet spot. Luckily, in golf, he doesn’t have that problem. He’s actually hitting his irons slightly better than Scheffler this week. If the PGA falls into his lap, I think we’ll know why.
Jon Rahm remembers. It wasn’t long ago that Rahm was the top dog. It wasn’t long ago he went toe-to-toe with Scheffler in Scottsdale, and even though he lost, we knew he was the best player in the world. Why? Because he won a week later, in Los Angeles, at the Genesis Invitational. And then the Masters two months after that.
But then Rahm left the scene. We felt we knew his motives, but it still felt confusing. In the times when he’s returned — the majors — it’s been different. But this? This week feels like the old Rahm. Birdies in bunches, just like they were on Saturday’s front and back nine. He will be out in front of Scheffler, setting the pace through the gettable 7th and 8th holes. When he ties the lead on the 10th, who blinks first?
Davis Riley is the essence of Christie’s Towards Zero. He was searching for it only a few months ago. Failing to break 80 twice in the first two events, and missing three cuts right after that. You could spend a couple chapters with him then, as he was fixated on being neutral. That is, with as many zeros on that launch monitor as possible. Zero degrees closed, zero degrees open, zero-point-zero degrees in or out. Neutral is what robots do with a golf club, not humans.
At some point, this human wised up and stopped chasing a machine-generated version of “perfection.” He’s been up and down and up and down since. Eight straight made cuts, then a missed cut last week in Myrtle Beach. There’s no way of explaining it, but there he is, four shots back. And you know what? Not a single person expects him to be the party-spolier. It’s a tantalizing position.
Bryson DeChambeau. If we are forecasting final round mayhem like a game of Clue, could it be…The Scientist…on a long, soft-ish PGA Tour course…with the crowd behind him? That was happening Saturday. And DeChambeau knows the halls of Quail Hollow as well as anyone, and far better than Scheffler. He top 10’d it here before he chased distance, in 2018. Then he returned in 2021 and top 10’d it after bulking up.
After listening to Scheffler explain his execution and focus and pride that led him to this major moment, I went searching for hints about what I might be missing while everything seems so obvious. I got as far as the driving range, where I found DeChambeau exactly as you’d expect, signing autographs and posing for photos. The spectators who weren’t waiting for his John Hancock shouted at him as they walked by: “The people’s champ!”
It’s hard to argue with that honorific when you watch DeChambeau at these tournaments. He feels that title, too. When he birdied the 15th hole on Saturday, he was in the lead alone, and raised his hands repeatedly as he walked to the 16th tee. We know what happened next: a bogey-double-par finish. But that’s the hook of a good mystery: disbelief. This guy can’t win.
As DeChambeau started to climb the stairs from the range to the parking lot, I told him he had me believing for a moment. He snapped his head around all serious and said, “Look — I’m going to bring the energy,” before turning to take a few extra steps up the stairs. He paused at the top before turning back with a smile.
“And, hey, I might suck, too. Who knows?”
Exactly. Who knows…?
