ATLANTA – Even the world No. 1 can have a case of the shanks.
Scottie Scheffler, who is trying to close out his first FedEx Cup title, picked a bad time to hit the dreaded shrank. At the eighth hole at East Lake Golf Club on Sunday during the final round of the Tour Championship, Scheffler shanked a bunker shot, his second shot at the drivable par 4.
“Shanked it!” NBC’s Kevin Kisner said.
“This Tour Championship just got game on,” NBC’s Dan Hicks said.
Dissecting what went wrong, Kisner said, “Right off the hosel there, running that club too far out to the right.”
“That disturbing hosel sound out of the sand,” Hick said.
“You can see it in his body language right now, Dan,” Jim “Bones” Mackay said. “He is shaken up.”
Scheffler made bogey, the only one made at the hole all day, and Collin Morikawa, his closest competitor, made birdie and clenched his fist for a two-stroke swing. What was once a seven-stroke lead for Scheffler had been trimmed to two.
“I’ve never seen him shank a bunker shot in all my days,” Kisner said. “The only reason I was thinking maybe he shanked it is because maybe he was trying to hit a fat shot and not catch it clean like you normally do and wanted it to release down that hill, so, a little indecision on where he wanted to strike the sand.”
Added Hicks: “Things just got incredibly more interesting.”
Indeed, they did.
“I got off to a good start and then I had obviously the two holes there on 7 and 8, and Teddy did a good job of keeping me focused. Was able to hit a nice shot in there into 9 and really change the momentum,” Scheffler said after his round.
Scheffler being Scheffler he bounced back, striping a 4-iron to 3 feet for an easy birdie at nine to restore some order in the universe. But you never know when the shanks will strike — even to world No. 1.
No one is immune to the shank.
Not even Scottie Scheffler. pic.twitter.com/RVlQfZyzjG
— PGA TOUR (@PGATOUR) September 1, 2024
