Scheffler on the brink of withdrawing: “Didn’t know if I was going to be able to continue playing”

Defending champion Scottie Scheffler struggled with severe muscular discomfort in his neck on the second day of the Players Championship 2024, which is why the American even had to be massaged on the course. The neck problems restricted Scheffler so much that he even considered withdrawing from the tournament, as the world number one revealed after the round.

Players Championship 2024: Scottie Scheffler struggles with neck problems

After his second round, Scottie Scheffler was immediately asked about his neck problems, which were obviously causing the defending champion problems. According to Scheffler, the pain started on the second hole: “Yeah, I hit a shot on my second hole today and I felt a little something in my neck, and then I tried to hit my tee shot on 12, and that’s when I could barely get the club back. So I got some treatment, maybe it loosened up a tiny bit, but most of the day I was pretty much laboring to get the club somehow away from me.” However, the US-American did not feel any pain in the run-up to the Players Championship.

Looking back to the second round: “Yeah, I did what I could to kind of stay in the tournament today, and hopefully it’ll loosen up and then I’ll be able to make somewhat normal swings tomorrow.” The plan is to get treatment and hope for an improvement.

Despite the severe discomfort, Scottie Scheffler played a good round of 69 and is still hot on the heels of leader Wyndham Clark (-14) thanks to his 67 on the first day and is six shots behind. The fact that the leaderboard looks so positive for Scheffler is not a matter of course for the 27-year-old. The defending champion even feared he had to withdraw from the tournament: “Yeah, like I said, I did enough I felt like today to keep myself somewhat in the tournament, and so that’s really all I could ask for. The way I was getting around the course, the way my neck was feeling, I didn’t know if I was going to be able to continue playing, so yeah, good fight out there.”