Scottie Scheffler slams ‘absurd’ PGA Championship layout and reveals when course becomes ‘unfair’

Scottie Scheffler battled the elements and his own urges as a one-over 71 at the PGA Championship.

The world No.1 tumbled down the leaderboard after putting himself out in front with a superb round Thursday.

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But three bogeys on the opening four holes made his second round a very different proposition.

Scheffler fought back to keep himself in contention and even managed to rein in his emotions when he was apparently considering smashing his iron into the dirt on the 15th.

He claimed the brutal pin locations, which have shed any notion of that Aronimink would be an easy ride, are the toughest he has ever seen on the PGA Tour.

“This is the hardest set of pin locations that I’ve seen since I’ve been on Tour, and that includes U.S. Opens, that includes Oakmont,” he said.

“I did ask, I asked Fooch [Mark Fulcher], who caddies for Justin Rose. He’s been around a long time — and I asked Teddy [Scheffler’s caddie Ted Scott] too — have you seen anything like this before? They said maybe Shinnecock is the only place they have seen that has pins that could compare to this.

“It’s difficult to get the ball close to the hole. It’s difficult to hole putts, especially when you have big slopes and wind, and I think that’s why you see the scores so close to par.”

Shinnecock Hills Golf Club is based in Long Island and has hosted the U.S. Open five times — most recently in 2018.

The Texan thinks that Aronimink‘s greens don’t follow the curves of the course with ‘manufactured’ angles making things even harder.

“But it’s different in a sense on this golf course, because Oakmont, their greens are extremely severe, but they’re extremely severe in one direction,” he explained.

“Here, it’s like the green may slope all this way and then we put the pin down here and then there’s also a slope this way. And like it’s not as, how would you say, natural to the slopes that are there. There’s a bit more, I think, that’s manufactured into the greens, and it’s just very difficult.”

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Scheffler made a point of insisting that the course wasn’t unfair.

“I think the only time in our game where it’s unfair is like if you get wind starting to blow the ball off of greens,” he added. “I hadn’t seen that yet.

“It looks like the wind’s going to die down as the week goes on. I don’t think we’ll see that this week.”

Earlier in the week, there were suggestions that the wide fairways would provide little challenge for the world’s best players.

After his first round, Jon Rahm revealed exactly why people were struggling.

“You know what, I can understand because, if you just go by some of the numbers, some of the fairways are wide, the greens aren’t crazy firm,” he said.

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“But a lot of those fairways are sloped in a way that they play very narrow. Like 15 today, I thought I was going to be in the fairway undoubtedly, and I was off the fairway. Same on 10, same on 4. It can easily roll off.

“Then the rough doesn’t look as long as many other majors, but it’s such a thick blade of grass that, even when the lie looks okay, it catches you so bad.

“So I can see how in appearance it might be easier, but it’s not. You need to play really good golf to shoot lower than 3-under. And then on top of that, those pin locations today are good ones. I mean, they’re tucked. They’re not easy.

“There was somebody earlier in the week where there was some chatter where people thought 15- to 20-under was going to win. And I think that got to somebody in the PGA, and they did something about it. Because if the golf course stays like this and it keeps firming up, yeah, obviously it’s not going to be anything like that.”

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