Scottie Scheffler’s season of excellence continued Sunday at the RBC Heritage.
He will simply have to wait until Monday to achieve victory. Play was halted due to darkness at the event at Harbor Town Links in Hilton Head, South Carolina, with Scheffler five shots ahead and three holes to play. There was a 2 1/2 hour weather delay, from 4:28 p.m. to 7 p.m., that forced the PGA Tour to end Monday.
Scheffler is looking to become the first since Bernhard Langer in 1985 to follow up a Masters victory with a win the following week (Langer also won at Harbor Town). Gary Player in 1978 and Jimmy Demaret in 1950 also achieved the feat. An RBC Heritage victory would also be Scheffler’s fourth in five starts, including the Masters, The Players Championship and the Arnold Palmer Invitational. At the Houston Open, he finished tied for second and missed a putt to force a playoff.
Scheffler is 20 under par this week, with four players at 15 under par. Sahith Theegala also has three holes to play, with JT Poston on the 18th fairway and Patrick Cantlay on the edge of the 18th green. Wyndham Clark finished a fourth round of 65.
Scheffler punctuated Sunday with a head-shaking 15th hole – he had an extremely rare miss with his second shot, going just left into the water. As he made the drop, CBS tried to foreshadow what was to come by displaying a graphic indicating that it had been 65 holes since Scheffler had a double bogey.
In fact, he’s now at 66. He hit his approach shot with a spin, landed on the slope and rolled it 11 feet. The horn sounded to end play, but Scheffler was allowed to finish the hole — he drained the putt, raised his fist as if he had just won the tournament and walked out to a waiting golf cart.
There will be an 8 a.m. restart Monday, with Scheffler on tee box 16. That’s assuming he’s still in Hilton Head. His wife Meredith is at home in Dallas in the final stages of her pregnancy, and Scheffler has promised to withdraw from the tournament if she goes into labor.
Scheffler only showed up at Hilton Head on Wednesday after winning his second Masters, playing nine holes in the pro-am and saying he would see the rest of the course in his first round on Thursday. It was daring a signature event field to beat him, but instead he shot a 69 in the first round, followed by a 65 on Friday and a 63 on Saturday to take a one-shot lead on Sunday .
He just increased his lead from there, with a chip-in eagle on No. 2 and a birdie on No. 5. He also made a birdie on No. 13, but above all, did not give up an inch to those who were chasing, with zero. bogeys in the fourth round.
The RBC Heritage finish will be broadcast on Golf Channel.
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(Top photo: Jared C. Tilton / Getty Images)