CHARLOTTE, N.C. — The 17th hole at Quail Hollow is far from easy, a menacing par-3 over water that causes its share of fits in the three-hole closing stretch known as the Green Mile.
It may have cost Bryson DeChambeau a shot at winning the PGA Championship.
While it ranked as the most difficult hole on the course during the third round Saturday—playing .419 over par—only three balls found the water and just five players in the field made a double bogey.
DeChambeau was one of them at a time when he had been tied for the lead.
His 5 on the hole dropped him to 5 under par for the tournament after he also bogeyed the 16th hole to drop from 8 under par and a brief solo lead.
Coupled with Scottie Scheffler’s closing stretch of birdies on three of the last four holes, the 2024 U.S. Open champion finds himself in a tie for eighth, six shots back heading into the final round.
The 17th turned out to be huge.
DeChambeau had just a 9-iron from 187 yards and plenty of green beyond the flag. It came up short and left in the water.
“Hit a great 9-iron exactly the way I wanted to,” he said. “The wind just pumped it. Nothing I can do. Wind flipped from being neutral off the right like it was on [No.] 4, I believe, and it just was almost straight in and we misjudged that, considering on 16 we thought it was playing almost a little downwind [in the same direction].
“Hit a great shot on 17 and just made a dumb double, and on 18 hit a great 3-wood. Just needed to aim it more left. It went in the bunker and consequently—I actually hit a great shot out of the bunker. Right on my target line and the wind just turned into me again. It was just a tale of the wind going into me instead of downwind. It cost me three shots and that’s what happens here at Quail Hollow.”
Those three shots look mighty big now. As DeChambeau spoke with reporters afterward, he was still just three shots back. That increased to six as Scheffler went on his late-round run.
“I can’t complain too much,” said DeChambeau, who tied for fifth last month at the Masters after playing in the final group with eventual winner Rory McIlroy. “You can always ask for more. You can always try to be a little greedier out there.”
DeChambeau made three birdies in his first nine holes and then consecutive birdies at the 14th and 15th to fire up the crowd and take the solo lead.
But he misfired with his drive on the long 16th, finding the right rough and then missing just off the green to the left, some 85 feet from the hole. From there, he wasn’t able to get up and down for par.
The double bogey at the 17th added more misery.
DeChambeau played the three closing holes in 3 over while Scheffler, several holes behind, played them in 2 under leading to the big difference.
“All I can do is control what I can control and if I go out and shoot 6-, 7-under, that’s what I'm focused on doing,” he said. “Not that that’s what’s going to do it, but you never know. But I’m going to shoot as low as I possibly can.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Late Crash at Quail Hollow’s Green Mile Damages Bryson DeChambeau’s PGA Championship Hopes.