What’s at stake for Scottie Scheffler on Sunday? It’s more than a PGA Championship trophy

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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Like two legacies passing in the night 100 yards across Quail Hollow’s 15-acre lake, Bryson DeChambeau and Scottie Scheffler’s climbs up the mountaintop swapped places and traded roars in a way that sent one back on his heels.

At 5:25 p.m., it was PGA Championship solo leader DeChambeau furiously high-fiving fans after consecutive birdies. Twenty minutes later, DeChambeau stood over a bogey putt and had to step off. The pandemonium across the water was too much. At first, he didn’t give it enough validation to look up, but eventually, he had to.

Oh, he saw it. Scheffler’s 305-yard, high-arcing 3-wood tee shot softly rolling perfectly to the pin on No. 14 for a tap-in eagle. DeChambeau missed his bogey putt, fell to 5-under and could only continue to watch as Scheffler catapulted himself to a solo lead that by the end of the day reached six shots. Scheffler is 11-under-par for the week after a comically absurd finishing stretch of eagle-birdie-par-birdie-birdie that made even the world No. 1 shout, “(Expletive) yeah, baby!” on the 18th green.

If Thursday and Friday were chaotic, alternatingly confusing and amusing, and full of struggling stars and thriving journeymen, Saturday was the day golf’s icons came hunting for their place amid the game’s pantheon, each one looking to separate themselves from the pack of recent major champions controlling the sport.

And it was the round in which one man reminded the world he’s not just the best of the moment. He might be the best of his entire generation.

“It’s a Scheffler showcase performance!”

Scottie finishes his round of 65 in style. pic.twitter.com/AH8HYj2GVS

— Golf on CBS ⛳ (@GolfonCBS) May 17, 2025

Because quietly, underneath the surface of Scheffler’s 104-week run at No. 1 and Rory McIlroy completing the career Grand Slam, there’s another competition for supremacy happening.

Six different golfers in their primes between the ages of 28 and 32 are at two major championships and ready to win more. Nobody has won No. 3 since Brooks Koepka (who has five now) in 2018 and Jordan Spieth the year before. But in 2024, three men’s golfers won their second.

It’s why on Sunday, teeing off at 2:40 p.m. in a final group with Alex Noren three shots behind him, Scheffler has a chance to win major No. 3 and put himself in a class above his peers.

Collin Morikawa won the 2021 Open Championship at 24 years old to become the first golfer to ever win two different majors in his first attempt. It was all in front of him, but despite remaining one of the best players in the world, he hasn’t won one since. Justin Thomas came from behind to win the 2022 PGA Championship in a playoff. A former world No. 1, Thomas proved then his 2017 win was no fluke and currently sits No. 5 in the world.

Jon Rahm joined the group with his 2023 Masters win. By the time he left for LIV in December 2023, Rahm vs. Scheffler for player of the year was the best debate in the game. “One of the great joys of my career is going up against Jon,” Scheffler said in March. “He’s a tremendous player, tremendous talent. I was definitely surprised to see him leave last year and I for sure miss playing against him…

Scheffler ran away with the 2024 green jacket — his second Masters — and a convincing argument as the sport’s most dominant star. Xander Schauffele went from the best golfer without a major to winning two of the next three at the PGA Championship and Open Championship. And of course, DeChambeau’s riveting win at last June’s U.S. Open at Pinehurst invited himself to the party.

For four hours Saturday in Charlotte, it appeared three of these men were set for a Sunday clash.

Rahm shot 67 to take the clubhouse lead at 6-under, multiple groups ahead of Scheffler and DeChambeau. He was as low as 7-under before a bogey on 17.

Then came DeChambeau. Sure, he was the talk of golf in 2020 with his weight gain and hyperbolic distance as he won the U.S. Open, but the last two years are when he truly became one of the era’s greats. He led the Masters each of the last two years. He lost the PGA Championship by one stroke. He won the U.S. Open in June and finds himself T8 this week at Quail Hollow. If not for the Green Mile disaster of ending bogey-double bogey-par, he’d be in the final pairing with Scheffler and not six back.

As much as golfers pretend they don’t think about things like legacy, they’re all desperate for the next one. Scheffler wants to prove he can win one outside the Masters. DeChambeau wants to be treated as equal to Scheffler and McIlroy. Morikawa is on a years-long mission to regain his killer instinct. And Rahm, perhaps the most introspective and thoughtful of the bunch, wants so badly to prove his move to LIV was not some career-stalling mistake.

“Hard to express how hungry I may be for a major,” Rahm said Saturday, “about as hungry as anybody can be in this situation.”

Scheffler’s closing stretch grabbed control of the PGA Championship. (Alex Slitz / Getty Images)

But Scottie Scheffler has this way of sucking the life out of his foes when he deems it time.

At the 2022 Masters, he and Cam Smith were a shot apart Sunday through two holes. By the 16th, Scheffler led the field by six shots. At the 2023 Players Championship he turned a two-shot lead into a five-shot domination. The next year at the Players, with an injured neck and trailing by five, he shot 64 to steal the trophy from Wyndham Clark and Schauffele. And at the 2024 Masters, he neared the turn in a four-way tie with Morikawa, Max Homa and Ludvig Aberg. He beat Aberg by four and the others by seven.

So as his Saturday playing partner Si Woo Kim —  tied with him for the lead through 44 holes — walked out the scoring area at Quail Hollow, Kim had the eyes of a man who had seen some things.

Kim once joked playing with Scheffler makes him “feel like I’m not on the PGA Tour.” He has that effect on people, and Kim had to watch not just as Scheffler eagled 14, not just as he birdied 15, but as he closed one of the tougher three-hole stretches in golf with shots to 12, 18 and 9 feet. Just stupid.

“What we’ve seen Scottie do over the last three, four years is quite impressive,” Rahm said last month. “His ball-striking level is outstanding. Anytime you have a year where you’re being compared to Tiger in his prime, I don’t think I need to add anything else to that.”

Yes, Rahm and DeChambeau will try to get their third major on Sunday. Just like Noren, David Riley and J.T. Poston will try to get their first. Just like Keegan Bradley and Matt Fitzpatrick, each six back, will try to get their second. There’s always history on the line at any major championship, and Sunday feels like a quietly significant moment in who can raise themselves above their peers.

Unfortunately for everyone else, they’re chasing a guy who does not give away 54-hole leads. It’s like Fitzpatrick said Saturday: If they can hit every green and make every putt, maybe they’ll have a chance…

“But I don’t see Scottie bobbling it.”

(Top photo of Scottie Scheffler: Alex Slitz / Getty Images)

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