World Nos. 1-3 Off to Surprising Slow Start at Quail Hollow

Expectations were high for the the marquee grouping of world Nos. 1-3 Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy, and Xander Schauffele Thursday morning at Quail Hollow.

Instead of seeing the trio peppered amongst the top of the leaderboard, they lagged, with recently minted career grand slam member McIlroy posting a 3-over 74, defending champion Schauffele carding a 1-over 72, and Scheffler closing well late with a two-under 69.

The Green Mile, Quail Hollow’s treacherous closing final three holes, proved a trying test for the game’s best players. The group started the day on the back nine and opened with decent momentum before running into the 16th. Scheffler, coming off an eagle putt from short and right off the green on the par 5 15th, ended up making double bogey there after hooking his approach shot to give the two shots he just gained right back.

McIlroy also doubled the 16th after driving left into trouble. He couldn’t convert his bogey putt from 12 feet and finished the Green Mile at 2-over after making pars on Nos. 17 and 18.

Schauffele also hooked his approach on the 16th into the water and ended upmaking a double bogey. It’s not every day that one hole brings the top three players in the world to their knees.

“I kept the honor with making a double on a hole, and I think that will probably be the first and last time I do that in my career unless we get some crazy weather conditions,” Scheffler said.

Throughout his day Schauffele couldn’t quite get his title defense going. He ended up with only two birdies, struggling to capitalize on Quail Hollow’s shorter par 4s. On the 311-yard par-4 13^th, he drove it in the water short and left of the green on the drivable par 4 with his 3-wood.

Besides the blemish, Schauffele took plenty of positives from his Thursday round.

“I've got to look through it. I think there's a lot more good in there than bad,” Schauffele said after his round. “I feel fine. Besides that shot on 16, if I take that away, I was able to hit the green and two-putt, I shot 1-under and probably would have been a decent start to the tournament.”

Scheffler felt upbeat with his game after closing with birdie on No. 9 to finish his first round.

“I feel like I did some good things out there and did some things I could improve on," Scheffler said. "I had a couple sloppy bogeys, I felt, early in the round. You know, I had the early bogey there on 11, which was a little sloppy, and then I had one on like maybe the third short hole that was sloppy as well. Overall, I did a good job battling and keeping a level head out there during a day which there was definitely some challenging aspects to the course and did a good job posting a number on a day where I didn't have my best stuff.”

McIlroy’s performance proved one of the biggest surprises of the morning wave. A birdie on his first hole of the day felt that the four-time winner at Quail Hollow would continue his mastery of the course, but then only made one more birdie the rest of the day. His wayward drives, only hitting four fairways all day, proved punishing. One of this week’s heavy favorites will spend his second round battling to make the cut instead of in expected contention.
T
he trio head out together for the second round at 1:47 p.m. Friday.