LOUISVILLE, Ky. — The cheers were endless Saturday at the PGA Championship, and when another record day of scoring finally ended at vulnerable Valhalla Golf Club, so were the possibilities.
Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele were tied for the lead. Irish star Shane Lowry thrust his way into the mix with a 9-under-par 62 to tie a major championship record last set just two days earlier. Bryson DeChambeau chipped in for an eagle on the last hole to set off a wild celebration.
And all Scottie Scheffler could do during all this chaos — at least it was inside the ropes this time — was listen to those cheers for others.
Scheffler’s remarkable streak of 42 consecutive rounds at par or better finally ended during the second-lowest scoring average for a Saturday at the PGA Championship. He faded early, never quite recovered, and shot a 73 to finish the day eight shots back with 23 players ahead of him.
“Too many mistakes,” Scheffler, who declined to speak to reporters, said on the CBS telecast after wrapping up his third round. “I came out here hoping to have a good round and didn’t get it done.”
Schauffele, who opened the week with a 62 that felt easy, labored to stay in front and was two shots ahead until a 9-iron shot came out hot and sailed the ball over the green at the 15th. With water on the other side, he was careful with a chip out of shin-high grass and moved it 10 feet. He chipped on and two-putted for a double bogey, only his second hole over par through three rounds.
Schauffele bounced back with two closing birdies for a 68.
Morikawa briefly took the lead with a six-foot birdie putt that went 360 degrees around the cup before dropping on the 15th, and he holed a 10-foot birdie on the 18th for a 67 to tie Schauffele. They were at 15-under 198 through 54 holes with plenty of company.
Sahith Theegala birdied six of his last 10 holes for a 68 and was one shot behind. Another stroke back was the trio of Lowry, DeChambeau (67) and Viktor Hovland (66) — former champions of the British Open, the U.S. Open and the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup, respectively.
And it didn’t stop there. Fifteen players were separated by five shots.
Harris English, one of four Baylor School graduates who started the event but the only one remaining in contention, had five birdies in a round of 68 with bogeys on the sixth and 18th holes. He was at 10 under, tied for 10th and in great position for his best PGA Championship finish a year after missing the cut.
Chattanooga resident Stephan Jaeger was at 2 under after a 70, tied for 60th among the 78 players remaining in what started Thursday as a 156-man field. When the darkness-suspended, fog-delayed second round wrapped up Saturday morning, he had made the 1-under cut on the number.
Two other Baylor grads did not, with Keith Mitchell missing it by a stroke and Luke List missing it by five.
AP photo by Sue Ogrocki / Baylor School graduate Harris English waves after making a putt on the first hole at Valhalla Golf Club during the third round of the PGA Championship on Saturday in Louisville, Ky.English, a four-time winner on the PGA Tour, isn’t out of the running for what would be the 34-year-old’s first major championship.
“There are a ton of guys who can do it tomorrow,” Morikawa said.
The shocker was Scheffler not being among them.
Scheffler was coming off the most heart-racing day of his career Friday, which included an arrest for not following police orders, brief jail time and a 66 to get into contention for a second straight major. But the Masters champion and No. 1 player in the Official World Golf Ranking was never a factor Saturday after an early stretch of double bogey-bogey-bogey.
“I definitely did not feel like myself today,” he said. “Yesterday happened, I did my best to recover from it and come out and compete. This morning was not my usual routine for a round. At the end of the day, I came out hoping to have a good round, but I wasn’t able to get it done, which was frustrating.”
Even in the city that’s home to the Kentucky Derby, this final round could be tough to handicap.
Lowry’s magnificent performance — he made 161 feet worth of putts — ended with a wedge shot to just inside 12 feet and a clear shot at 61, only to not give the putt enough pace.
“Probably the most disappointed anyone can ever be shooting 62,” Lowry said. “Look, I went out there with a job to do today, and my job was to try to get myself back in the tournament. And I definitely did that.”
DeChambeau had only three birdies and didn’t get much out of his round until he chipped in for his eagle, a moment so loud it was hard to tell if he or the thousands of fans were more excited. He said he hasn’t felt that kind of energy since his 58 to win the LIV Golf League’s Greenbrier tournament last year.
“Exhilarating,” he said. “That was pretty exciting there. I was pretty pumped. I’ve got a good chance. I’m not executing to the level that I know I can, but playing well enough to give myself a chance, obviously.”
Justin Rose (64) was three shots back, tied for seventh with Robert MacIntyre (66). Dean Burmester (68) was alone in ninth.
The group five behind the co-leaders included Justin Thomas, a Louisville native who felt chills on a steamy day of sunshine when he hacked out of the weeds, down to the green and into the cup on the par-3 14th for a most unlikely birdie. He shot a 67.
That’s 15 players at 10 under or better, the most through 54 holes in major championship history. The previous record was seven players, most recently in the 2022 British Open at St. Andrews.
The scoring average for the third round was 69.55, a fraction behind the record for the 2018 PGA Championship at Bellerive Country Club in Town and Country, Missouri.
This was the day to go low just to stay in the hunt. Scheffler, using a fill-in caddie with regular looper Ted Scott attending his daughter’s high school graduation in Louisiana, was in trouble from the start — a double bogey on No. 2 from mangled rough, a tee shot into a hazard left of the reachable par-4 fourth hole.
He was 4 over through four holes, and on three occasions he followed a birdie with a bogey. It was his highest score since a 73 in the third round of the Tour Championship last August.
Now the focus turns to Schauffele, the Olympic gold medalist from the Tokyo Games in 2021 who is trying to bag a silver prize — the heavy Wanamaker Trophy — for his first major title. Schauffele has been leading or tied in six of his past seven rounds.
The exception was losing a 54-hole lead in the Wells Fargo Championship last Sunday to Rory McIlroy’s closing 65 at Quail Hollow Club in Charlotte, North Carolina.
“I just need to stay in my lane, and hopefully it’s enough,” Schauffele said.
Morikawa already had two major championships at age 24 and is slowly working his way back to that smooth, repeatable swing. He had one early wobble, missing a four-foot par putt on the second hole, and that was really his only big mistake.
There was no shortage of candidates to win the second major of the year. It was crowded at the top, just like it was at the 2020 PGA Championship at San Francisco’s TPC Harding Park, when a dozen players were separated by three shots going into the final round. Morikawa emerged with his first major victory.
“Look, I’ve played against all these guys. It’s not like any of these guys are new,” Morikawa said. “They all have their accolades within themselves, and really anyone can go low.”