Golf sometimes seems like child’s play in the hands of the best in the world. The advancement of technology and the preparation of golfers dwarfs the courses every year in the face of cannonballs that devour more and more meters with their shots. And the records that have stood for decades in a sport with a centuries-old tradition are falling in a matter of months. The American Xander Schauffele won this Sunday in the PGA Championship, the second major of the season, on the Valhalla course, in Louisville (Kentucky) with an unprecedented score of -21. It is the best result under par in the history of the Grand Slam, leaving behind several records of -20: Jason Day in the 2015 PGA, Henrik Stenson in the 2016 British Open, Dustin Johnson in the 2020 Augusta Masters (breaking the iconic mark of -18 by Tiger Woods in 1997) and Cameron Smith in the 2022 British Open. All are results less than 10 years old, a reflection of the new times.
Schauffele conquered the first major of his career at the age of 30 (he was considered the best in the world today without a major crown) and reached number two in the world rankings, the greatest achievement of his career after winning Olympic gold in the Tokyo 2020 Games. Behind him, just one stroke away, that -20 that equaled previous records, was Bryson DeChambeau. As in the Augusta Masters, when Jon Rahm dressed Scottie Scheffler in the green jacket, once again a man from the American circuit defeated a representative of the Saudi League. At -18 was Viktor Hovland and at -15 were Thomas Detry and Collin Morikawa. Scheffler, world number one, climbed to -13, only removed from the final fight by that round of two strokes over par on Saturday, when he paid on the course for the tension of the previous day: his arrest by the police for skipping a traffic control, the handcuffed trip to the police station, the wait behind bars, the call from the owner of the Valhalla field to free him so he could play, his summons to testify next Tuesday and surely be acquitted… The adrenaline of the moment subsided , everything came out the next day. And there another amazing record was broken. On the third day of the PGA, Scheffler broke a streak of 41 consecutive rounds at par or better, an incredible nine-month stretch of tying or beating the field.
It is the time of records that appear around every corner. Five times in the history of the greats a card of 62 has been delivered, the lowest ever recorded in the Grand Slam, and four of them have happened in the last 11 months. After Branden Grace in the 2017 British Open, Rickie Fowler and Schauffele have shone in last year’s US Open, and Schauffele and Shane Lowry again in this edition of the PGA. The rain also ended up turning the Valhalla route into favorable terrain for very low markers.
The debate has been on the table for a long time. At the beginning of this decade the project was launched Distance Insights to measure the impact of technology on golf. The study estimated the ground gained by players with their tee shots in the last quarter of a century at 27 meters on average. The solution proposal by the governing bodies of world golf, the USGA and the Royal and Ancient, is to modify the materials from 2026 so that the ball flies less. The idea is on the table while the big hitters continue to break barriers. The year 2023 closed with the highest average distance on the American circuit, 299.9 yards (274.2 meters), since there are statistics. Nobody ventures where the limit is anymore.
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