Scottie Scheffler finished second at the Masters on Sunday, one shot behind Rory McIlroy, after spending the weekend trying to climb out of a 12-shot deficit. The world No. 1 closed with a 4-under round and said the biggest swing in his tournament came from how the course played between Thursday and Friday.
Scheffler played two bogey-free rounds over the Masters weekend, a run that made him the first golfer since 1942 to post consecutive bogey-free rounds during the tournament’s weekend. But that late charge could not erase what happened on Friday morning, when he shot a two-over 74, while McIlroy later fired a seven-under 65 in the afternoon to build the cushion that held through Sunday.
Scheffler said he was not in charge of course setup, but he would have liked Thursday and Friday to be more equal in firmness. He said he was surprised by how soft things got on Friday afternoon, especially late in the day, and said going out early that day hurt his chances because he was not able to post an under-par round. “We went out on Thursday afternoon [and] were some of the most challenging conditions we had all week,” he said, adding that whatever was done to soften the greens meant he could not take advantage of them when he went off early on Friday.
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The contrast mattered because Augusta National had already given him a brutal opening test. Scheffler started the weekend 12 shots back, and his Friday round left him chasing from a position he could not fully recover from even after a seven-under round on Saturday moved him back into contention. By Sunday, he had done enough to force pressure on the leaders, but not enough to catch McIlroy, who won a second consecutive Masters and became the first repeat champion at Augusta National since Tiger Woods in 2001 and 2002.
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Scheffler did not frame his remarks as a formal complaint so much as a blunt accounting of how the week unfolded. Still, his point was clear: the difference in firmness between the early and late side of Friday, combined with his morning tee time, left him chasing a tournament that had already tilted. That day, he said, probably hurt the most in terms of his chances to win.
