Golf: Theegala Comes Second, But Feels Winner Scheffler Was Too Far Ahead; Bhatia 18th

Golf: Theegala comes second, but feels winner Scheffler was too far ahead; Bhatia 18th (Image Source: IANS)

Another Indian American Akshay Bhatia: Scottie Scheffler added another jacket, this one a red tartan from the RBC Heritage as he won by three shots with a 19-under total. He shot 69-65-63-68 in the four rounds. Right behind him was Indian American Sahith Theegala, who picked his second runner-up finish of 2024 and is now fourth in the FedEx Cup standings.

Theegala logged rounds of 66-67-67-68 for 16-under total. Another Indian American Akshay Bhatia was T-18 with rounds of 71-67-69-68 at 9-under.

Scheffler missed few shots, and his game was iron cast as he walked away from Harbour Town Golf Links on Monday morning with another victory that extended a dominance not seen since the peak years of Tiger Woods. Scheffler had a five-shot lead with three holes to play when the final round, delayed 2 1/2 hours because of storms Sunday afternoon, was suspended by darkness.

Scheffler now has won four of his last five starts, the exception of a runner-up finish in the Texas Children's Houston Open when he misread a 5-foot birdie putt that would have forced a Playoff. Scheffler considered this one of the tougher wins because it followed the Masters. Scheffler now has 40 consecutive rounds at par or better, a streak that began at East Lake in the TOUR Championship last August. His position at No.1 in the world is so great that he became the first player since Woods to crack the 15-point average mark.

The only competition on Monday morning was for second place.

The storms brought cold weather and a strong wind. Scheffler missed the 18th green to the right, chipped safely to 18 feet and two-putted for a bogey. That ended his streak of 68 consecutive holes with no worse than a par. Theegala birdied the 16th hole, saved par from a bunker on the par-3 17th and closed with a par for a 68 to finish alone in second.

He admitted, “Even though I finished second, I felt like I was never really in it to win there. Scottie was just so far ahead.”

Cantlay (68) and U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark, who finished his 65 on Sunday before the storms, tied for third.

Scheffler won’t show up again until the PGA Championship the third week in May as he headed back home to Dallas, where his wife is expecting their first child sometime next week. Such is Scheffler’s dominance that his last seven victories have come against fields that had at least eight of the top 10 players in the world.

The last player to run off a stretch like this — four wins and a runner-up — was Woods at the end of 2007. Woods then won his first three PGA TOUR starts (and one on the DP World Tour) to start 2008. Scheffler now has 10 titles on the PGA TOUR in a span of 51 tournaments dating to his first victory in the 2022 WM Phoenix Open.