Scottie Scheffler’s artificial use of local rule (twice) avoids blasting

World # 1 Scottie Scheffler is in search of her first win of the season this weekend on 2025 Genesis Invitational. But he may not have had the opportunity, if not for a smart use of a local rule, as problems hit on Friday. Twice.

After an opening round 70 under treacherous weather conditions at Torrey Pines, Scheffler started round 2 on the back nine. And things went quickly sideways.

On his second hole of the day, the long par-3 11 hole on the South Course, Scheffler sprayed his tee shot badly left.

While the shot was definitely long and back, the visual representation was at Pgatour.com showing a much worse story. With the hole that played 215 yards, Scheffler’s ball 257 yards from the tee box.

But the undisputed best golfer Alive did not emit the green by more than 40 meters. Instead, he caught a bad break when his ball took several jumps off carriage paths. These caroms made a bad situation a terrible situation.

Now Scheffler stared down at a difficult 40-yard chip from Thick Rough for his second shot, with a possible crooked number in Offing.

But just as everything seemed to go off the rails, Veteran Pro took advantage of a local rule to escape his horrible lie.

First, Scheffler noted that a Genesis Invitation sign near the 12th tee box had an impact on his attitude, so he took relief via Model Local Rule F-23.

This rule says the following: “Relief from a temporary real estate is usually allowed when there is physical interference or line of vision -interference from TiO.”

The rule allows a player to drop their ball at the nearest point with complete relief without punishment. The tournament sign counted as a tie, so after a long discussion with the official of a rules, Scheffler was able to drop his ball a club quantity from the original place on the collar in the tee box. The new lie was much improved but still difficult.

But it didn’t end there. After practicing his turn from the new place, Scheffler seemed to feel that the sign was still affecting his turn. So after another discussion with the rules official, Scheffler made another free drop another club quantity away, this time ending with a perfect lie on a flat part of the 12th tee box. You can see the full sequence on PGA Tour’s YouTube page here.

After his two lucky free drops, Scheffler trusted solely on his world development skills to avoid a large number. With a wedge in his hand and a good lie in front of him, he fell his second shot to three feet. Then he drained the subsequent putt for a Ho-Hum pair.

From there, Scheffler added three birdies and an eagle to shoot a 67 that moved him one from Davis Thompson’s leader on his way into Saturday’s third round.

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