Back to Work, Scottie Scheffler Starts Fast and Hangs on for Opening 67 at PGA

The world No. 1 promptly eagled his first hole Thursday at Valhalla and finished with his 41st straight round of par or better.

Scottie Scheffler returned from a layoff to shoot 67 on Thursday at the PGA Championship. / Jon Durr-USA TODAY Sports

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — His round was far from perfect, and Scottie Scheffler will undoubtedly want to fine-tune a few things before returning to Valhalla Golf Club on Friday morning.

But when you consider he didn’t play for the past three weeks, was at home for the birth of his first child just eight days ago and is probably due for some sort of letdown, a score of 67 during the first round of the PGA Championship on Thursday was more than adequate.

And starting your round knowing the leader, Xander Schauffele, is already 9 under par ... well, that doesn’t make the situation any easier.

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

Sure, there were some missed opportunities and some squandered shots. But Scheffler was 2 under par before he could work up a sweat and his position on the leaderboard left him just five strokes back of leader Schauffele, in a tie for 12th.

Scheffler pounded a 350-yard drive into the first fairway, then holed his second shot from 167 yards. The ball bounced once and went into the hole for an eagle 2.

Scottie Scheffler has ARRIVED.#PGAChamp pic.twitter.com/Ky3KNeGNb6

— PGA Championship (@PGAChampionship) May 16, 2024

“It was a stock 9-iron,” Scheffler said. “I was trying to hit it right at the pin because I felt like if I hit it the right way, the shortest it was going to go was on the pin. I felt like it was going to go a little past the pin if anything, and it was nice to see that one go in, obviously.”

Scheffler added a birdie at the 4th hole, bogeyed the 5th, birdied the 8th and 13th before bogeying the 14th and then bouncing back with a birdie at the 15th.

“I'd like to clean up a few of the mistakes,” Scheffler said. “I missed two putts I felt like I should have holed today, but that's going to happen when the greens get a little chewed up.”

The score was his 41st consecutive round of par or better on the PGA Tour. During that streak, Scheffler has shot just one round at even par, and that came during the Houston Open where his streak of 28 consecutive subpar rounds came to an end.

He’s won four of his last five tournaments, including the Masters, two signature events in the Arnold Palmer Invitational and RBC Heritage and the Tour’s flagship tournament, the Players Championship.

Scheffler has been consistently beating the best fields, losing to a single player by a single shot going back to his first victory this year at the Arnold Palmer. He won his second Masters and now has 10 PGA Tour titles.

His place atop leaderboards has become common for the better part of two years but it’s an improvement in putting in the last two months that has pushed him into winning territory more often.

Scheffler’s putting was not as proficient during the first round as he was negative strokes-gained on the day to rank 105th in the field. But he still did enough elsewhere to give himself a chance.

He will tee off at 8:48 a.m. on Friday with a chance to beat the predicted bad weather and post a score. We’ll then have a better idea of his chances to prolong this run of victories.