
CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA | The decision was announced shortly after 6 p.m. on Wednesday – that despite more than 4 inches of rain in recent days at Quail Hollow Club, preferred lies would not be used in the PGA Championship – but it was around 10 a.m. Thursday when the effect splashed into full view.
Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Xander Schauffele, Nos. 1, 2 and 3 in the world ranking and grouped together like stars on the red carpet at the Met Gala, were playing the par-4 16th hole in their slow-starting first round after having started on No. 10.
Scheffler and Schauffele found the middle of the fairway with their tee shots while McIlroy, who never found a rhythm and may have played his way out of a shot at winning a second straight major championship by shooting 74, was making a mess after pulling his tee shot down a hill.
While McIlroy made a double bogey the old-fashioned way – hitting a poor recovery shot and scraping together a 6 that looked like a double a member might make – first Scheffler then Schauffele boomeranged their second shots into the lake along the left side the green, leading to their own double bogeys.
The culprit?
Mudballs.
Because players were not allowed to lift, clean and place their balls in the waterlogged fairways, both Scheffler and Schauffele, who are known to be pretty good at this golf thing, couldn’t remove the mud packed on the right side of their golf balls.
It’s not an uncommon dilemma in tournament golf, but mudballs scare players because they minimize the thing they most covet – control over where their shots go.
Both Scheffler and Schauffele understood the risk and tried to account for what might happen but it didn’t help.
It was a remarkable sequence that led to three of the best players in the world all making a double bogey on the same hole. Though he didn’t like it – more on that in a moment – Scheffler at least found a twinkle of humor in the moment.
Perhaps a little perspective is needed regarding the use of lift, clean and place in competition. It’s not unusual for it to be invoked in PGA Tour events or in other major competitions, but it has only been used once in a major championship – at the 2016 PGA Championship at Baltusrol, when players practically needed canoes to get around.
“I kept the honor with making a double on a hole, and I think that will probably be the first and last time I do that in my career unless we get some crazy weather conditions,” said Scheffler, who pieced together a 2-under-par 69 that kept him prominently in the unfolding storyline.
Perhaps a little perspective is needed regarding the use of lift, clean and place in competition. It’s not unusual for it to be invoked in PGA Tour events or in other major competitions, but it has only been used once in a major championship – at the 2016 PGA Championship at Baltusrol, when players practically needed canoes to get around.
Traditionalists sometimes refer to it as lift, clean and cheat and, as history has shown us, major championships believe in playing the ball as it lies.
When Kerry Haigh, the chief championships officer for the PGA of America and one of the most respected figures in the game, announced the playing conditions late Wednesday, it wasn’t a great surprise. Neither was finding mudballs around Quail Hollow on Thursday, which handled the excessive rainfall exceptionally well.

Here’s how Schauffele explained what happened:
“We were in the middle of the fairway, and I don’t know, we had to aim right of the grandstands probably. I’m not sure. I aimed right of the bunker and it whipped in the water and Scottie whipped it in the water, as well.
“It is what it is, and a lot of guys are dealing with it, but it’s just unfortunate to be hitting good shots and to pay them off that way. It’s kind of stupid.”
Scheffler isn’t one to make excuses and he made it clear after his round that he didn’t want to get into a debate over whether lift, clean and place should have been used but he made his point in his clear-eyed way.
“It’s one of those deals where it’s frustrating to hit the ball in the middle of the fairway and get mud on it and have no idea where it’s going to go. I understand it’s part of the game, but there’s nothing more frustrating for a player. You spend your whole life trying to learn how to control a golf ball, and due to a rules decision all of a sudden you have absolutely no control over where that golf ball goes,” Scheffler said.
“But I don’t make the rules. I just have to deal with the consequences of those rules.”
It’s the same for everyone and Scheffler understands that. In this case, however, he didn’t sound like someone who thought the best choice was made. Had it been links golf, where no amount of rain produces mudballs, Scheffler would agree with the decision.
“When you think about the purest test of golf, I don’t personally think that hitting the ball in the middle of the fairway you should get punished for.” – Scottie Scheffler
But on overseeded rye fairways on clay-based rather than sand-based soil, the equation is different.
“When you think about the purest test of golf, I don’t personally think that hitting the ball in the middle of the fairway you should get punished for,” Scheffler said.
“On a golf course as good of conditioned as this one is, this is probably a situation in which it would be the least likely difference in playing it up because most of the lies you get out here are all really good. So I understand how a golf purist would be, oh, play it as it lies. But I don’t think they understand what it’s like literally working your entire life to learn how to hit a golf ball and control it and hit shots and control distance, and all of a sudden due to a rules decision, that is completely taken away from us by chance.
“In golf, there’s enough luck throughout a 72-hole tournament that I don’t think the story should be whether or not the ball is played up or down. When I look at golf tournaments, I want the purest, fairest test of golf, and in my opinion maybe the ball today should have been played up.”
It cost Scheffler two shots and he was proud that he didn’t let it linger and cost him more than that.
He was not alone in his frustration as Schauffele, who shot 72, shared the sentiment. He also cast an eye toward the weekend and what’s to come with a forecast of sunny skies and temperatures approaching 90 degrees.
“The mud balls are going to get worse,” Schauffele said.