ATLANTA (AP) — Scottie Scheffler birdied four of his last five holes Saturday at East Lake for a 5-under 66 that kept Collin Morikawa at bay and moved the No. 1 player in golf one round away from capping his season with a $25 million FedEx Cup prize.
Scheffler extended his lead to five shots over Morikawa going into the final round of the Tour Championship, and no one else was closer than nine shots.
Sahith Theegala might have been two shots closer except for calling a two-shot penalty on himself on the third hole for lightly touching the sand with his club out of a bunker. Video was not entirely clear, but Theegala informed officials and his par turned into a double bogey.
“Pretty sure I breached the rules, so I’m paying the price for it, and I feel good about it,” Theegala said. “I’m not 100 per cent sure. But I’d say I’m 98, 99 per cent sure that some sand was moved.”
He responded with seven birdies on the back nine and shot 66, leaving him nine shots behind.
Taylor Pendrith of Richmond Hill, Ont., is tied for 15th at 9 under — 17 shots behind Scheffler.
Morikawa, who started the tournament six shots behind Scheffler as the No. 7 seed, got within two shots of the lead when he holed a birdie putt from just inside 10 feet on the par-5 sixth hole.
But that was as close as he got. On the next hole, Scheffler holed a 15-foot birdie putt while Morikawa came up short of the green, lagged a putt to just outside three feet and missed it, a two-shot swing that restored Scheffler's lead to four.
Morikawa three-putted for par from 60 feet on the par-5 15th, and then birdied three of his last four holes for a 67. He wound up losing a little more ground to Scheffler.
“Not exactly the moving day that I needed, but I knew this entire week I was going to need something special to come out on top and I’m going to need something very special,” Morikawa said. “But I believe in myself, and hopefully that comes out tomorrow.”
Scheffler was at 26-under par. The five-shot lead is not the largest since this format began in 2019. Scheffler had a six-shot lead two years ago, closed with a 73 and finished one shot behind a hard-charging Rory McIlroy.
A year ago, he started as the No. 1 seed and had only one round under par.
“I feel like I’ve done a lot of stuff well and played solid, so I’m looking forward to the challenge of trying to finish off the tournament tomorrow,” he said.
British Open and PGA champion Xander Schauffele never got on track. Starting the day five shots behind, he had two bogeys in the opening four holes and failed to birdie the three par 5s in his round of 71. He was 10 shots behind.
He has never hit more than seven fairways each of the three rounds, and it has cost him at a time when he needed to go low to stay in the game.
“I was just not playing well enough to shoot consecutive 7-under pars,” Schauffele said. “You’ve got to be hitting at least 12 fairways to give yourself some serious looks and then obviously do a lot of good after that, but it starts with your ball on the short stuff.”
For everyone else, it's a race for cash.
The FedEx Cup winner gets $25 million, with second place worth $12.5 million and third place paying $7.5 million.
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AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
Doug Ferguson, The Associated Press
