Scottie’s Rough Day at the Range: What a 73 Really Tells Us About the Game’s Best Player

I’ve been around professional golf long enough to know that a 2-over 73 in the first round of the Phoenix Open doesn’t usually warrant much analysis. Players shoot bad rounds all the time. That’s golf. But when the world’s No. 1 player—a guy who just closed out 2025 with a victory and opened 2026 by winning The American Express—suddenly finds himself 10 shots off the pace and genuinely at risk of missing a cut for the first time in nearly four years, well, that’s worth paying attention to.

What strikes me most about Scottie Scheffler’s Thursday collapse at TPC Scottsdale isn’t the score itself. It’s what the score reveals about the mental and mechanical challenges even the best players face when things go sideways.

The Unraveling We Rarely See

In my 35 years covering this tour, I’ve noticed something about elite players: they tend to manage damage when things aren’t clicking. Scheffler clearly wasn’t managing damage on Thursday. After a solid start—he was sitting at 1 under through 17—he completely fell apart on the inward nine.

“Scottie got off to a great start, hitting it inside 3 feet for a birdie on the par-4 10th. He immediately bogeyed the next hole when he couldn’t get up and down, then sandwiched two birdies around a bogey at the long par-4 14th.”

That sequence right there tells you something important. He was grinding, fighting, trying to piece together a decent round. But notice what happened next: the wheels didn’t just come off, they came off completely. A three-putt on No. 1, a double bogey on No. 2 after a full mechanical breakdown (fairway bunker, 54-yard advance into the rough, then a short third shot), and then the emblematic moment—the double chip on 18.

Having caddied for Tom Lehman back in the ’90s, I learned to recognize the difference between a bad round and a round where a player’s lost his rhythm entirely. Scheffler’s Thursday had that feel. And the images of him repeatedly tapping his wedge shaft against his legs, throwing up a hand in disbelief—these are gestures you simply don’t see from Scottie very often.

Breaking a Historic Streak

Here’s what really matters: Scheffler has made 65 straight cuts. That’s the PGA Tour’s longest active streak. His last missed cut came at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in 2022. That’s an extraordinary run, the kind of consistency that separates the very best from everyone else.

A missed cut Friday wouldn’t erase what he’s built, obviously. But I think it would tell us something important: even the most durable, most consistent players in the world have limits. They have courses that don’t suit them, conditions that feel off, or simply days where the game reminds them it’s humbling.

What makes Scottie special isn’t that he never shoots 73s. It’s that 73s are so rare for him. His 33 consecutive rounds under par—now broken, with that 2-over round—represented something we haven’t seen much of in professional golf: a player operating at such a consistently elite level that parity rounds felt noteworthy.

“Scheffler headed to the range right after his round, hoping to find something that would help him continue the PGA Tour’s longest active streak of cuts made at 65.”

That detail matters more than the score. Most players would go back to the hotel and stew about it. Scheffler went to work. That’s championship mentality.

Context Matters

I also want to note that Scheffler came to Phoenix as a two-time winner here (2022-23) and the tournament favorite. There’s probably some rust from the season break, some adjustment to being the hunted rather than the hunter at every event. You can’t win as much as he’s won and not have some target on your back affecting your mindset, at least a little.

The scoring conditions Thursday were ideal—”ideal scoring conditions,” the report notes—yet he still couldn’t piece together something around even par. That suggests the issue wasn’t environmental. It was mechanical or mental, and possibly both.

The Road Ahead

Here’s what I think happens Friday: Scottie finds something on the range, tightens up his short game, and shoots something in the mid-60s. He probably still misses the cut because 10 shots is a lot of ground to make up and he gave away strokes he didn’t need to. But even if he does miss the cut, it won’t matter much in the long run. One bad tournament doesn’t erase 33 straight rounds under par or 20 PGA Tour victories.

What this round does tell us is that even the best players in the world are human. They have mechanical breakdowns. They get frustrated. They tap their wedges against their legs and walk off muttering to themselves. The difference between Scottie and the rest of the field is how he responds when that happens.

We’ll know more on Friday. But after three decades watching the best in the world, I’ve learned that one round—even a frustrating one—rarely defines a player’s season. What matters is how he bounces back.