THE 154TH OPEN

July 19, 2026

Scottie Scheffler

Mixed Zone

Q. How would you assess the day and just the effort to try to push your way up there?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, I mean, today was a great effort. I felt like I was doing the right things out there. I gave myself a lot of looks again today. It was just -- I guess it just wasn't my week. I got a good break there on 17, but off the tee, my ball -- I don't know if you watched the shot. It probably should have been in the fairway.

Yeah, that stuff hurts. My ball on 13 goes into that hole. It wasn't my best tee shot, but it was a time where I needed to be aggressive, and I saw some good stuff happening with guys that hit the ball over there the last few days, and it didn't happen for me today.

Just those little kind of bounces. My ball on 14 I think is in the fairway, I come up there, it's in the pot bunker. Little stuff like that over the course of the week tends to add up.

I competed really well this week. I did a good job of staying patient and hit the ball really nice over the course of four days. Maybe yesterday was the only day I didn't strike it as well as I would have liked to.

Q. Can you talk us through the 17th hole, getting relief there? It was hard for us to see exactly what was happening, what the rules official was telling you.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: The rules official said it landed just barely left of the grandstand thing. I don't know what you call that, like a sponsor area or something. And Teddy had a beat right on where it was coming down. So when we get up there, it's past the fence that marks the TIO, so he said anything that's in there is it part of the TIO. So then we said -- we tried to figure it out. I said, if I find it, does that help me; can I drop it -- since that would be about 50 yards closer to the hole. He said, yes, you can then use that spot, but you might have to go to the other side of the TIO, which I didn't know exactly where that would be, and that's not a great angle coming across there.

So decided to stop the search and go back and drop it doing point-of-entry TIO relief. Actually I did that once this year during the Byron as well. Not something I'm proud of but I was familiar with.

Q. So you didn't actually have to find the ball?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: No.

Q. You didn't find the ball, just to be clear?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I stopped them. They had guys pointing from up there, like it landed right here, and I just kind of hauled up there, and I was like, guys, get out of there, stop, do not find the ball. Fortunately it was my security guy that I've had for a few years here. His name is Brucey. And then Woody was up there as well. So both those guys are pretty -- I know them quite well, so when I said, please don't look for the ball, they got out of there.

Q. On the tee at 17, were you thinking eagle and that's why you were so upset where the ball ended, or were you just thinking --

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I was thinking I hit another shot that I felt like was going to be in the fairway. That ball was slicing on the left edge of the fairway, and I hadn't seen many balls that just have not bounced, especially when they're curving sideways out here, and it was like, man, I got that break on 13 where I hit it in the rough and I couldn't advance it more than 10 feet and then 14 I thought my ball was in the fairway, and thin on 17 it's like, that ball is cutting.

The shot there for me, if I hit a normal 3-wood, it's going to get to those three bunkers to I have to put a ton of spin on it, and I did that basically by slicing the ball. So I hit the shot I needed to to get the ball in the fairway, and the ball didn't react the way I thought it to off the tee. Yeah, you're thinking, give myself a look for eagle, of course.

Q. What went into the decision to putt or chip at 18?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Momentum going up towards the hole. If I was to bounce it with a wedge into that hill, it was a little bit moundy, and if I felt I could have stopped it quick enough on the green to not have too much momentum to where it still had a chance to go in the hole, I was thinking about hitting a higher shot. But with the wind helping there and being on the downslope, I didn't think I could get it to stop quick enough. I thought it was going to have too much momentum as it went towards the hole. So I elected to putt it. Hit a good putt, just didn't go in.

Q. You spoke last week about your desire to play in the New Zealand Open. What about New Zealand holds so much appeal to you?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Just the views from "Lord of the Rings" pretty much.

Q. We get that a little bit.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: No, I've always desired to make it to that part of the world. I've always desired to play in the Sand Belt, and New Zealand was always a place we wanted to visit. Growing up, I played with a lot of guys that were from Australia and New Zealand, and the Kiwis were always tremendous people and always talked highly of the food. It seems like a great kind of getaway place for me to go with Mer or our family. Maybe one day, but it's a heck of a long ways away from where we live.

Q. Does golf need to do a better job of getting out of America and getting to places like Australia and New Zealand?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Do a better job? I don't know. The United States is a hub for sports, and I think that's why you see so many professional sports like the NBA and the NFL have an audience that reaches worldwide. I definitely have a desire to travel the world and play golf, but with a young family, I'm not really in a spot right now where that is very easy for us to do.

Coming over here for a few weeks with the time change and a two year old can be exciting, and we have a structured season now in which we compete in. It can be challenging to make it across the world to play. But it's something that I'll look forward to in the future.

Q. Was there a number or anything you felt like you needed to get to to feel like you would have a chance today?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: You know, going into today, I had some experience in comebacks in stuff like this, and I told myself if I could go out and shoot 4-under on the front nine, I'd be right in it because the leaders wouldn't have barely teed off yet, and that would have put me at 8, and the leader would have been at 10. I was 3-under, made the birdie there at 12, and I think that got me to 8, and at that time the lead was 11. So I'm thinking to myself, let's get a few more out of this and see what happens.

Links golf, you never really know how conditions are going to change. I stayed aggressive there with the driver off 13. Didn't hit my best tee ball and then paid a pretty severe price for it.

I definitely don't regret any of the decisions that I made either off the tee or going into greens today. I did a good job of staying aggressive and was committed to what I'm doing and I was very proud of kind of how I played this week when I felt like things weren't going necessarily my way. It was mentally for me I think a really, really good week.

Q. Do you see similarities with Cam Young and the trajectory of lots of seconds and then the success that he had at the Ryder Cup with your career?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah. I mean, I think anytime you can be in those situations in which you're going to feel the most pressure and you're able to succeed, I think that can only give you confidence going forward. You saw Cam at THE PLAYERS this year finish off that tournament, and that can only help increase his confidence.

Yeah, there's no reason that you can't feed off of those kind of positive experiences. You're never really probably going to feel more pressure in golf than you do in our team events.

Q. You said you weren't comfortable talking about the Bryson thing yesterday. Are you today?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: No. I've been really focused on the tournament. I think that opens up a greater discussion that -- all I can really say is I think maybe we need to be a little bit more strict in the way that we are policing guys, but it's a little bit of a balance because you've got certain guys like a Bryson who every shot he hits is going to be shown on TV. When you have camera angles that are far away, things can look different than they do when you're right there.

We've done a good job of -- I don't know, I hate saying stuff out here because I don't want anything to get taken out of context. All I'll say is Bryson, I've known him for a long time, and he's a lot of things, but he's definitely not a cheater. I've never seen him cheat once, whether we were having a putting contest on the putting green or chipping contest, or anytime we played amateur golf, I never saw anything suspicious.

When you're watching him there from that camera angle, maybe he was a touch careless around his ball, but I don't think he did anything intentionally.

We've seen penalties happen with -- like you remember Jon Rahm a couple years ago at the Memorial when his ball moved in the rough, and it's like to the naked eye, can you really tell that?

I think sometimes it's just a difficult position in the game of golf. When I was growing up, if this was the line between things that were -- like if this was the line, here are the rules and this was the right side of it and this is when you're doing things against the rule, you always tried to stray really far that way. I feel like at times, sometimes you see players maybe push it a little bit further than they should.

I think we need to kind of get back to the traditions of the game and maybe we do need to police things a little bit more stricter in the game.

But like I said, it's a tough line to kind of cross. So that's why it's hard for me to say anything like this. Bryson is a guy that I've known for a really long time. Like I said, he's not a cheater.