Breaking news from ESPN: Scottie Scheffler was arrested by Louisville Metro Police on Friday morning after trying to drive into the entrance of Valhalla Golf Club. Traffic outside the golf course had been stopped after a man was struck and killed by a shuttle bus around 5 a.m. ET. Scheffler faces charges of second-degree assault of a police officer, third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving, and disregarding traffic signals from an officer directing traffic. The assault charge is a felony; the others are misdemeanors. Scheffler was released at 8:40 a.m. ET Friday without bail. He arrived at Valhalla less than an hour before he was scheduled to tee off at 10:08 a.m. ET.
PGA Championship first-round scores
PGA Championship second-round tee times
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VSiN’s golf experts offered their first-round observations and second-round predictions before news of Scheffler’s arrest . . .
Matt Youmans
Xander Schauffele’s act is annoying, and it has been for a long time. He’s the master of the fast start and weekend fade. This is similar to the U.S. Open last summer when he fired a first-round 62 before slowly deteriorating the next three days and finishing 10th. His game looks so sharp in most areas that there’s a decent chance he can keep it up, but I’m not betting on it. Schauffele has eight top-10 finishes with no wins this season, in addition to 12 career top-10 finishes in majors without a win. He’ll start looking over his shoulder at Rory McIlroy, Scottie Scheffler and hopefully Brooks Koepka and Bryson DeChambeau on the weekend.
Of the four players I have the most invested in, Koepka and DeChambeau are in good shape while Justin Thomas and Jon Rahm, who recovered from an embarrassing start, are hanging on the fringe of contention. Koepka probably should have scored a little better and showed positive signs. I rarely add much after the first round of any golf tournament and instead wait for Friday night.
Koepka -115 over Sahith Theegala, who could bounce after a low round, will be a small second-round matchup play.
Kelley Bydlon
The first round of the PGA Championship saw some surprisingly low scores and some stars shoot to the top of the leaderboard.
Xander Schauffele started things off with posting an incredible 9-under-62 and he has your first round lead (congrats to everyone who landed on him for FRL… I’m still kicking myself). He was exceptional tee-to-green and I don’t see that part of his game regressing anytime soon, because he’s been doing it all season. However, will he be able to keep up such hot putting? Likely not. And he’ll be having to fight off the likes of Rory McIlroy, Brooks Koepka, and of course, Scottie Scheffler. Scheffler led the first round in SG:T2G and looks like the old Scottie.
No second-round matchups for me, but I will be adding an outright bet on Scottie Scheffler. I think anything around or longer than his pre-tournament odds is a good bet. I left room on my outright card just for this possibility.
Matt Brown
Scottie Scheffler played his B-game on Thursday and finds himself only five strokes off the lead. Scottie putted pretty poorly, and wasn’t quite as crisp with his irons (when compared to his usual lofty standards) and is still in contention. That’s how good he is. I’d bet (pun intended) that we see the Scottie we’ve seen the previous five tournaments show up the rest of the tournament. So long as he finds his putter and can get even to the field there, he’ll be right there on Sunday.
Tony Finau and Sahith Theegala putted the lights out on Thursday and both find themselves T2 headed into Friday. But we have two different stories here. Theegala is 9th on Tour in SG: Putting, so his performance is not out of the ordinary. Finau, on the other hand, is 160th on Tour in SG: Putting this season. Considering he lost around-the-green, and barely gained off-the-tee…Finau could be in for some regression.
Other Notes:
Stephan Jaeger shot 1-under while losing 2.5 strokes putting and 0.5 strokes around the green. Jaeger is 14th on Tour around-the-green and is an above Tour average putter.
Hideki Matsuyama lost off-the-tee as well as putting. Deki can find the driver, but he’s always been a poor putter. If the putter isn’t running hot, Deki is a fade.
Akshay Bhatia lost 3.5 strokes putting on Thursday, fifth-most in all of Round 1. Bhatia is 22nd on Tour in SG: Putting on the season, so he could be someone to back in Round 2 H2Hs or Groups as positive regression with the putter is almost guaranteed.
Alex Noren and Aaron Rai both finished Round 1 at 3-under par, and tied for 18th. Multiple versions of my model (seen below) had them ranked highly for this tournament for the skills that I plugged in and weighted heavily. If you believe the algos, maybe their success is sustainable. (shout to BetSperts and RickRunGood for the model framework).
