It is difficult to remember too many major championships which have enjoyed the kind of build-up that the PGA Championship has had this year, with the likes of Rory McIlroy, Bryson DeChambeau and Scottie Scheffler all boasting real momentum heading into Quail Hollow.
It is very rare that a major championship sees so many of the top players arrive in brilliant form. Of course, Rory McIlroy won The Masters to complete the career grand slam. While his last two performances have been less notable, his fifth major title surely opens the door for many more.
Scottie Scheffler brought an emphatic end to his wait for a victory on the PGA Tour in 2025. The world number one won The CJ CUP Byron Nelson by eight shots.
Elsewhere, Justin Thomas is a previous winner of the PGA Championship at Quail Hollow. He also ended his near three-year wait for a win last month as he triumphed at the RBC Heritage.
Meanwhile, Xander Schauffele has finished in the top 20 in his last four events, with the one top 10 coming at The Masters. And Jon Rahm has continued his run of only finishing in the top 10 in LIV Golf events since making the jump.
Rory McIlroy and Bryson DeChambeau backed to repeat history at the PGA Championship
But like Scheffler, Bryson DeChambeau goes into the second major of the year having won on his most recent start. DeChambeau finally got across the line at LIV Golf Korea after having leads on Sunday at Miami, Augusta and Mexico City.
Of course, that lead at Augusta came when paired with McIlroy in the final round. And speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast, Rex Hoggard suggested that there is a real possibility that history may repeat itself this week.
“I think statistically, even if you exclude some of the outlier LIV performances – again, I don’t think we have any reason to question the authenticity – he’s gaining nearly two shots on the field off the tee. Now again, that’s relative to his LIV playing competitors. You can’t take that and cross-reference it to PGA Tour players, it’s against LIV competition, I think that’s important to note. But if he was doing that on the PGA Tour – again, that’s a big if – that would be a half shot better than peak Rory McIlroy with his driver. It is by far the best driving of Bryson DeChambeau’s career, and it’s even better than what peak Rory would have been,” Ryan Lavner said.
“So that fascinates me because to get back to the golf course for a minute, when you look at the course breakdown, when it comes to driver bias, this ranks third on the PGA Tour. You have to drive the ball long, you have to drive the ball straight, and you have to hit it really high. Those two players probably do it better than anyone in the game. And then you factor in with Bryson, go back to Augusta, and the one thing you had to do well which is your iron play, your approach play, he really struggled all week, finally caught up with him on Sunday. But when you talked about it this week, he felt like he found a fix in the next few weeks. Clearly, he ended up winning on the LIV tour in Korea, so he comes in here with a strange level of confidence in my mind, because as much as we could lean into Rory and I do think he should be the clear favourite, I would put Bryson very closely behind him. And I’m sure you did this today on Live From, if you pick those four players that I mentioned off the top, it would be Rory, it would be Bryson, it would be Scottie, it would be JT,” Hoggard replied.
“Of those four, I can probably pick apart, to use your terms, I’m picking nits at this point, but I can probably make an argument that okay, it seems that JT is doing something different with his swing; Matt Killen and him have been working together for a little while, it seems like JT’s dad’s not involved as much in his swing, so maybe there’s been a bit of a transition there. When it comes to Bryson, I’ll go back to the iron play at Augusta, and that’s going to be tested this week. When it comes to Scottie, there is simply just a lack of experience on this golf course. The only time he’s played here is at the 2022 Presidents Cup and he didn’t play particularly well. I think he earned half a point for the week. So you can pick apart three of those four. I would have a hard time finding a way to pick apart Rory. All that being said, I think we could end up with the dream scenario that we had at Augusta where you had Rory and Bryson going head to head in the final round. It’s hard to believe, but I think it’s a very likely possibility.”
The mistake Bryson DeChambeau made ahead of the final round at The Masters
What was particularly surprising about what happened at The Masters was how small a factor DeChambeau actually proved to be.
The American led after the second hole after McIlroy got off to a horrible start. However, it was McIlroy who would kick on from there. DeChambeau meanwhile, would post a 75 to fall out of contention.
And perhaps there is an argument that DeChambeau got too caught up in the battle with McIlroy, based on the comments he made after the third round.
“Every hole matters. I think the most important thing is just looking forward to the next shot and saying how can I give myself the best chance. I wasn’t striking my irons well today, so I have to go work on that, and if I get that locked in for tomorrow it is going to be a fun match,” he said.
“It is just one shot at a time. Get into every shot and hit it to the best of your ability. That is all I am going to focus on.”
DeChambeau recovered from a disappointing end to the 2024 Masters to go on and finish second at the PGA Championship and then win the US Open. It certainly would be little surprise if he also took plenty of lessons from what happened on Sunday at Augusta this year.
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