For a short while on Sunday morning, with the leaderboard at Royal Troon packing up tighter than the station wagon trunk before a family road trip, Scottie Scheffler had elevated himself to a familiar position:

Two under through his first eight holes and four under for the tournament, the 2024 Masters champ arrived to the par-4 9th fully in the mix. Scheffler found the left rough his tee shot and played his second just short of the green, leaving himself a 50-foot up-and-down for par. Scheffler chose to putt from off the green, leaving himself a six-footer for a four. That’s when things came unraveled. Scheffler proceeded to three-putt for double bogey, effectively ending his Open Championship hopes in the span of 30 seconds. The collapse was tough to watch, but the look on Scheffler’s face afterward was 100 times more agonizing.

None of us know what it’s like to be the World No. 1, but we’ve all been there and we all know what’s going through his head. As the old saying goes, inside you there are two wolves. One is saying breathe, take it one shot at a time. The other is howling “YOU F—ING LOSER!” at the top of its lungs.

Unfortunately for Scheffler, the gut-punching three-putt wasn’t an aberration but the encapsulation of a rocky putting performance at Royal Troon. Following an even-par 71 in brutal conditions on Saturday, Scheffler was ranked first in the field in strokes gained/approach … and 114th in strokes gained/putting.

After seemingly solving his putting woes this spring, Scheffler’s old nemesis reared its head once again in Scotland. Here’s hoping it’s just a blip, but it appears Scheffler’s short-stick struggles (with a little help from officer Bryan Gillis) will prevent him from capping an historic season with a second major title.

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