Scottie Scheffler Survives Third-Round Blip to Take 2024 Masters Lead Into Sunday

At one point Saturday five players were briefly tied for the lead - Bryson DeChambeau, Collin Morikawa, Max Homa, Ludvig Åberg and Nicolai Højgaard - after World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, who has a green jacket, made two critical errors going double bogey – bogey to not only lose his lead, but temporarily lose contact with the leaders.

It was a day when a Dane took the lead and then gave it all back and more.

It was a day at the Masters that was impossible to follow but extremely dramatic with most of the leaderboard involved in the fray.

The 2022 Masters champion Scheffler played as well as he has during all of 2024, but his luck seemingly turned after an outward 1-under 35.

Standing on the 10 ^th at 7-under for the tournament, Scheffler was cruising along but then uncharacteristic mistakes came - the first error seemed like a solid second shot into the par 4, but the ball released on landing and ran through the green, down the back slope into pine straw and next to a small bush.

The third shot found the green and rolled far down to the front of the green with a subsequent three-putt briefly costing Scheffler the lead.

“Obviously I wasn't trying to land it back there by the pin, but I get a bad gust and it lands eight feet from the pin, and it ends up in the bushes back there and I make double,” Scheffler explained. “Make another bogey at 11 and all of a sudden I'm probably going from in the lead to a few out of the lead and then, you know, things happen pretty fast out there.”

As Scheffler was scrambling on the 10 ^th , his playing competitor Nicolai Højgaard, who made the turn in 33 with two consecutive birdies, made his third birdie in a row, moving to 7-under and taking the solo lead over Scheffler who trundled down to 5-under.

The Dane’s lead lasted just one hole as he would bogey the next five holes to go from leader to 2-under and finish with a 2-over 74 and five shots behind Scheffler in the end.

“At the moment, it's all over the place,” Højgaard said of his thoughts after the round. “But I've got to regroup, got to go out and do my best tomorrow. There's been a lot of good stuff these days. Yeah, tomorrow go out and do my best and see where we end up.”

The final group included Bryson DeChambeau and Max Homa, both would struggle with Homa shooting a 1-over 73 and DeChambeau a 3-over 75, which included a finish of double-bogey, bogey, bogey, par, and birdie that moved the former U.S. Open champion to 3-under and four shots behind leader Scheffler.

“I'm going to look back on this one and try to figure out how to putt well, putt better on these greens and control the speed a little bit more,” DeChambeau said. “I haven't been able to use the foresight on the putting green, which is another variable that gets thrown in, which is totally fine. I've got to be able to conquer it. Nobody else is doing it, and they're able to putt just fine.”

For Homa, the round was frustrating at times, but stuck in there as he was patient throughout as he seemingly was running in quicksand.

“I don't know what more I could have done,” Homa said. “Could I have seen some putts go in, but I don't hate how I putt.”

Everyone that is a fixture on the leaderboard talked about the speed of the greens and how it made the round more difficult.

“Very glad I got through it today; it was very tough.” Homa said “I left the gym, and all of a sudden, the nerves hit. I'm glad I did it once before.”

Shooting a 2-under 70, the 24-year-old Ludvig Åberg is playing in his first major and looked up a leaderboard that included four major champions.

Oddly, the approach on Saturday by Åberg and his veteran caddie Joe Skovron was not only that of a player with incredible knowledge of Augusta National, but also experience of playing in majors.

“I think what me and Joe have been doing, we're both very disciplined,” Åberg said of his partnership with his caddie. “We're not trying to force anything. We're not trying to go for pins, and we're not trying to make decisions that will cost us, I guess.”

Instead, the team is calculating risks and taking a disciplined approach toward their targets. It’s a plan they hope to incorporate in Sunday’s final round as well.

“I think about it all the time, I'm okay thinking about it,” Åberg said of thinking about winning his first major. “Obviously I'm a competitor and I want to win tournaments. I feel very fortunate to be in this position and to be here playing golf. I don't think you should shy away from it. I don't think you should try to push it away. I try to embrace it, and I try to be okay with all that comes with it.”

Morikawa has two majors, and they came quickly, but since his last major title at the 2021 Open Championship, Morikawa has not been in the mix much in big events. He needed excellent final-round scores to record back-door top 10’s with a 5 ^th at the 2022 Masters after a final round 67 and a T5 at the 2022 U.S. Open after a final round 66.

Now Morikawa has a chance to break a mini drought and win his third major title with a green jacket hanging in the balance.

“Look, tomorrow, anything could happen,” Morikawa said. “There’s still a lot of guys right beneath us. We don't know what conditions are going to be like. The greens are getting firmer than I've ever seen out here. So, it's going to play a lot different from kind of what we've seen the first two rounds.”

Yet, with all the unknowns, Morikawa, who came here this week with little confidence and just one top 10 in the limited field Sentry event in Hawaii, is feeling his game of old may be returning.

“At the end of the day, I know where my head is at,” Morikawa said. “I know what I need to focus on, and I know what needs to be done if I want to close it off tomorrow.”

Sunday’s tee times for the leaders are:

2:05 - Cameron Davis (-2) & Nicolai Hojgaard (-2)

2:15 – Bryson DeChambeau (-3) & Xander Schauffele (-2)

2:25 – Max Homa (-5) & Ludvig Aberg (-4)

2:35 – Scottie Scheffler (-7) & Colin Morikawa (-6)