Augusta (United States) (AFP) – World number one Scottie Scheffler was left ruing early round struggles at Augusta after his bid to pull off a record Masters comeback came up agonizingly short. Scheffler, who had trailed eventual Masters champion Rory McIlroy by a massive 12 shots after Friday’s second round, finished just one adrift of the Northern Irishman after Sunday’s gripping final round shoot-out.
The 29-year-old two-time Masters champion appeared poised to eclipse the previous biggest 36-hole comeback in Masters history, belonging to Jack Burke, who made up eight strokes to claim the green jacket in 1956. But a bogey-free four-under-par 68 left Scheffler one shy of McIlroy’s winning total, leaving the American pondering what might have been had it not been for a difficult second round on Friday where he made four bogeys in a two-over-par 74.
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“I’d say Friday probably hurt the most in terms of my chances of winning,” said Scheffler, who felt that moves to soften greens after Thursday’s opening round did not benefit all players. “Going out on Friday, whatever they did to the greens to soften them up, they did some stuff, and I just wasn’t able to take advantage of that going on early on Friday,” he said. “I would have liked it to have been a little bit more equal in terms of the firmness on Thursday and Friday.”
Yet even allowing for his slow start, Scheffler remained an ominous presence lurking behind McIlroy on Sunday. Back-to-back birdies on the 15th and 16th holes left him within striking distance of the leaders, and a birdie putt on 17 rolled the slightest fraction wide of the cup. His hopes of a birdie on 18 were blown off course when the wind held up his approach to the green, forcing him to settle for a par.
“The putt I hit on 17 I really thought I made,” Scheffler said. “The shot into 18 I hit it exactly how I wanted to. I think we just lost the wind. Overall I’m not going to hold too many regrets, but yeah, definitely a bit disappointed now. But I started the weekend 12 shots back and ended up only one shot back. If I am going to blame anything, I should probably blame the first two rounds before I start looking at stuff from the last couple.”
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