Like an assassin moving in for the kill, Scottie Scheffler crept stealthily up the Open leaderboard on moving day.
It is quite the feat given the American is the world’s best player by a country mile, but it feels as if no one is really talking about him.
The rest of the field should be on red alert now. The world No 1 is in the perfect position heading into the final day, two off the lead after a level-par third round of 71 and ready to strike.
To be honest, had Scheffler brought his putter with him to Troon, he could probably have put this Open to bed on Saturday. The number of birdie opportunities he passed up would have made James Hunt blush.
Scheffler was nine for nine on greens-in-regulation going out. But he only landed one birdie putt, on the par-four third, where he stiffed his approach to five feet.
A succession of chances failed to drop before and after that solitary birdie. But perhaps that is how he preferred it. With all eyes on Shane Lowry and home favourites Dan Burn and Justin Rose, no one really noticed the most dangerous man in the field, hiding in plain sight. Even the television cameras seemed to prefer to linger on others.
Scheffler is a truly remarkable player. With that swing which makes him look as if he is going to topple over every time he lets one rip, he gives the impression of being off balance when in fact he is the most balanced player out there.
There are surely not many sportspeople who could be arrested for second-degree assault of a police officer, third-degree criminal mischief, reckless driving and disregarding traffic signals from an officer, and come back to shoot a 66 in a major championship hours later, as Scheffler did at Valhalla back in May.
His strong religious beliefs rub many people up the wrong way, but Scheffler spoke fascinatingly in the wake of his second Masters triumph in April about how his faith allows him to block everything else out and trust in God. Having tried everything else, Rory McIlroy might want to look at religion.
Scheffler actually arrived at the course a couple of hours before his tee time on Saturday looking as if he might have just spent a night in jail. Wearing a slightly dishevelled look, the 28 year-old got out of his courtesy car bleary-eyed, a baseball cap sticking off the top of his head at a jaunty angle. One half-feared he might have caught whatever bug it was which caused his caddie, Ted Scott, to lie down at during Friday’s second round while his charge was putting.
But from the moment he biffed an iron up the first fairway in heavy rain, it was clear Scheffler meant business.
Wearing a matching lilac waterproof outfit with a cut of jacket which made him look a little like Chairman Mao, the American was disciplined if not inspired with his golf. He was impeccable tee to green but struggled, as he has in the past, with his putter.
Scheffler ranks somewhere in the region of 100th in the field for putting this week, which says a lot about both his putting and the rest of his game. Even without holing anything, he stayed in contention in the trickiest conditions of the day, the field slowly coming back to him.
By the 12th he was within two shots of the lead. Perhaps sensing that he was sticking his head too far above the parapet Scheffler promptly dropped his first shot of the day at the par-four 13th when he failed to get up and down. He then dropped another at the long par-four 15th, failing to reach the green in two.
But a glorious tee shot on the 238-yard par-three 17th, which he struck to two feet, set up a birdie which brought him back to two-under-par. And from there, he will surely be a threat.
By a curious coincidence, the last person to win six tournaments in a year at this stage was Arnold Palmer in 1962. His seventh that year was The Open at Troon.
Scheffler, of course, knew nothing of that fact. “I love the history of the game, and there’s certain things that I know and certain things that I don’t,” he said when that statistic was put to him. That was something that for some reason I just never stumbled across. So I had no idea that that was a thing.”
Would it be nice to repeat it. “Yeah, that would be great.” If he holes a couple of putts today, the rest of the field had better watch out.
