Scottie Scheffler did not make up the ground on Rory McIlroy that he would have liked in his second round.
He started the day three shots back, and before McIlroy had even teed off he was five shots back, shooting a two-over 74 on day two.
Scheffler looked back to his usual self on Thursday, but his poor iron play crept back into his game, and he found the water on 13. Four bogeys on the day scarred his scorecard.
With the world number one, anything is possible, and it wouldn’t be surprising to see him mount a charge on the weekend. But he said he needs to improve at one key thing if he wants to win his third Masters.
Scottie Scheffler laments putting performance on day two of The Masters
After a disappointing second round, Scheffler was asked what he needs to improve on if he wants to catch the leaders. He said it all came down to his play on the greens.
The four-time major winner said, “I would like to hole a few more putts. I felt like it was rolling nice today, but just — balls just weren’t dropping.
“Maybe my reads were a little bit off. I felt like I was starting online, could have been speed on a couple of putts, but overall today I felt like I definitely played better than my score.
“It was frustrating to get it back to even, have a couple of par-5s in front of me, and then not do many things I felt wrong and wasn’t able to convert really, basically anything coming down the stretch.”
Scheffler lost over two strokes to the field on the greens, so he’s likely to have shot even par if he were even an average putter on the day. Of course, that statistic is affected by his iron play, but if his putter heats up expect him to shoot low.
Scottie Scheffler explains what his approach will be this weekend
Scheffler is much further back than he would have liked, so he might have to start attacking flags to stick it close. This was put to him after his round, and he responded, “I mean, you can’t force anything around this place.
“I definitely struck it well enough to have a really, really nice round today, so go get a bit of practice, get some rest, and get ready for tomorrow.”
He was then asked how he expected the course to play this weekend, and he said, “I was surprised at the greens.
“You know, I felt like the greens would get firmer as the week went on, but I think they may have saw how difficult it was late in the day yesterday that they — it felt like they softened them up a bit today, but I couldn’t imagine them doing that the rest of the weekend.”
Let’s hope for a difficult test on the weekend to put the cat among the pigeons!
