Scottie Scheffler praised Rory McIlroy for being able to \u200bcome through a tough stretch and close out the Masters on Sunday after the \u200cworld number one finished one shot behind the back-to-back champion.<\/p>\n
Scheffler, a two-time champion at Augusta National, looked well out of contention after the opening two rounds but went bogey-free through the weekend to finish the tournament at \u200b11-under par.<\/p>\n
“I’ve competed against him for a long time, and you don’t win the \u200bamount of tournaments that he’s won out here without being pretty resilient,” Scheffler \u2060said of McIlroy.<\/p>\n
“I knew going into today I was going to have to do something \u200bspecial if I wanted to catch him.”
\nMcIlroy saw the six-shot lead he built up through the first \u200btwo rounds evaporate in the Georgia heat on Saturday and trailed by two shots on Sunday before rallying to victory.<\/p>\n
“Having a six-shot lead at Augusta is never easy, and losing that is obviously something difficult,” said Scheffler.<\/p>\n
“But \u200bat the end of the day when you tee it up here on Sunday, you know, \u200bhe’s tied for the lead to start the day and had a solid round and did what he \u200cneeded to \u2060do in order to get it done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scheffler said a 74 on Friday did the most damage to his title hopes after difficult conditions on Thursday gave way to softer greens the next day.
\nThere were also a few moments on Sunday that could have gone differently, he added, pointing \u200bto a putt on 17 \u200band his approach \u2060at the last.<\/p>\n
“The putt I hit on 17 I really thought I made,” he said.
\n“The shot into 18 I hit it exactly how I wanted \u200bto. I think we just lost it in the wind, and it \u200bgot right \u2060up to the edge and came all the way back down.”he said he would not dwell on those closing holes.<\/p>\n
“Overall I’m not going to hold too many regrets, but definitely a bit disappointed \u2060now,” \u200bhe said.<\/p>\n
“I started the weekend 12 shots back and ended \u200bup only one shot back. If I am going to blame anything, I should probably blame the first two rounds \u200bbefore I start looking at stuff from the last couple.”<\/p>\n
\u2014Reuters\u2014<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":31663,"template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false},"news-type":[20],"class_list":["post-31723","news","type-news","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","news-type-sport","entry"],"acf":{"short_description":"There were also a few moments on Sunday that could have gone differently, he added.","published_date":"","news_description":"There were also a few moments on Sunday that could have gone differently, he added.","form_embed":"","author":"","image_caption":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/news"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31724,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news\/31723\/revisions\/31724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31663"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"news-type","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.channelafrica.co.za\/channelafrica\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/news-type?post=31723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}