Scottie Scheffler Barely Survives Cut Day at the Players Championship

The world No. 1 made it to his 70th consecutive weekend on the PGA Tour but that wasn’t assured until late Friday afternoon.

Scottie Scheffler made the cut with just one shot to spare Friday at the Players Championship. | Doug Engle/Florida Times-Union / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. — Scottie Scheffler has been known to run hot, a product of his high standards and immense intensity. It is sometimes more apparent, given the amount of TV time he gets, even if it would seem his frustration would be at a minimum considering all of his success.

But things have not been going quite as smoothly for the No. 1-ranked player in the world of late.

Not to the point of alarm, mind you. For Scheffler, it’s all relative, and perhaps that is part of the reason why it is somewhat shocking. He has a tournament victory earlier this year at the American Express. He tied for fourth at Pebble Beach.

And yet ... there were those slow starts for three consecutive events. There was the first time outside of the top 10 in nearly a year when he tied for 12th at the Genesis Invitational. Last week, a tie for 24th was his first time outside of the top 20 since the 2025 WM Phoenix Open.

And then Friday, there was Scheffler, flirting with the cut line at the Players Championship and looking every bit the part of the irritated weekend warrior.

“Yeah, I’ve played this tournament on the cut line the last couple holes, and it’s not fun,” said Justin Thomas, who played the first two rounds of the Players Championship with Scheffler. “It’s unlike any other place we play because it’s over or not in one swing. If you’re on the cut line and you’re standing on 17, if you hit it in the water, you’re all but done. Then the same kind of goes for 18 on the tee shot. It’s every bit as hard as trying to win a golf tournament.”

Scheffler’s three-putt from 11 feet on the 16th green put him in position to miss his first 36-hole cut in three and a half years. Bogeys at the 4th, 7th and 14th holes didn’t help, either. At one point, Scheffler dropped his club in frustration after teeing off on the 16th hole.

Just not used to seeing this from Scottie ⬇️ pic.twitter.com/xd7eEw7Rf1

— Golf Channel (@GolfChannel) March 13, 2026

And it wasn’t until his approach at the 18th stopped 9 feet from the cup that he had assured the weekend.

Scheffler rolled in that birdie putt to shoot 73 and finish at 145, 1 over par. The cut came at 146, 2 over par. He’s 13 shots behind 36-hole leader Ludvig Åberg. And he’s nine shots behind Thomas, who just last week had his own struggles in missing the cut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, his first event back after Nov. 13 back surgery.

Scheffler now has made 70 consecutive cuts on the PGA Tour, dating to the 2022 FedEx St. Jude Championship in Memphis, which was then a full-field playoff event. Since then, he has 16 PGA Tour victories, three major championship titles and won the Players twice.

It is the longest streak on the PGA Tour, as Xander Schauffele saw his cut run of 72 end in January at the Farmers Insurance Open. That was the longest run of consecutive made cuts since Tiger Woods set the record of 142 in 2005.

But Scheffler looked out of sorts for much of Friday, hitting just seven of 14 fairways and 12 of 18 greens. He ranked just 94th in the field in strokes-gained off the tee—typically a strong point for him—and was 78th in strokes-gained putting.

“You can just tell. It’s just timing and trying to match it up,” said Thomas of Scheffler, who did not speak to reporters following the round. “He’s still hitting shots that not many people on planet Earth can hit in the same rounds. It’s just golf. He’s been hitting it pretty much where he wants within like a blanket size for what seems like two or three years. He’s still had a pretty damned good year. I know I’d trade with him, but I’m probably not the person to ask.”