LOUISVILLE, Ky. — In the end, maybe Scottie Scheffler was simply gassed after his stressful Friday.
The world’s No. 1 ranked player shot a 2-over-par 73 in Saturday’s third round of the PGA Championship — one day after his controversial arrest — and fell out of contention at 7-under, eight shots out of the tournament lead held by Xander Schauffele and Collin Morikawa.
For Scheffler, it was his first round over par after posting 42 consecutive rounds of par or better and not shooting over par all season.
“It was a tough day,’’ he said. “I got off to a tough start. Way too many mistakes. I’m obviously pretty frustrated with the result. I definitely did not feel like myself today. Yesterday happened, and I did my best to recover from it.
“This morning was definitely not my usual routine for a round. I came out here hoping to have a good round and didn’t get it done. I’ll come back again tomorrow.”
At the very least, this week was going to test Scheffler’s concentration and patented unflappability.
The PGA, after all, was his first tournament in a month, and the week after his wife, Meredith, gave birth to their first child, Bennett, on May 8.
Then came Scheffler’s stunning arrest on his way onto the Valhalla grounds early Friday morning, an incident he called a “big misunderstanding’’ that “will be handled quickly.’’
Adding to that stress is this: Following Scheffler’s second round Friday, his caddie, Ted Scott, one of the rocks on his team, left town to attend his daughter’s high school graduation, leaving the world’s No. 1 player with a replacement caddie.
Replacing Scott — who’s been on Scheffler’s bag for all of his wins, including his two Masters victories — was Brad Payne.
Payne is the PGA Tour chaplain, who happens to have done some caddying on the PGA Tour with Paul Stankowski, and is a close friend of Scheffler’s. Scott was expected back late Saturday in time to be back on the bag for Sunday’s final round.
“That’s something we talked about from the beginning of our relationship was family always comes first, and it’s the same thing for me as it is for my caddie,’’ Scheffler said before the tournament. “It was a pretty easy decision. He told me at the beginning of this year that that was the date that it was, so I got a backup caddie lined up.”
Payne, who played college golf at Pepperdine, joined Scheffler during his warm-up Friday after Scheffler arrived.
He was with him after his round on the practice range and on his bag during the Saturday round.
Whether having a different caddie was a big difference, Scheffler struggled early in his third round.
Saturday was actually the kind of round you might have expected out of Scheffler on Friday in the aftermath of his arrest and jail saga.
Scheffler, completely out of character, came undone on the front nine of his third round.
He double-bogeyed the second hole after hitting his tee shot into a bunker and following it with a poor second shot from sand.
He then bogeyed the par-3 third.
It got worse on the fourth hole, a short drivable par-4 that players have been eating for lunch this week. Scheffler hit his tee shot far left, across a cart path and on the wrong side of a fence.
That forced him to take a penalty drop, and on his third shot Scheffler chunked his chip, leaving it in the rough well short of the green. His second chip, his fourth shot, ran some 10 feet past the hole, and he made that putt to save bogey.
But the damage was done.
In a span of four holes, Scheffler went from beginning his round at 9-under and three shots out of the lead to 5-under and seven shots off the lead.
From there, he spent the day trying to play catch-up.
