Scottie Scheffler will begin his defence of the PGA Championship alongside Matt Fitzpatrick and Justin Rose at 7.05pm UK and Ireland time on Thursday, with the world No 2 cutting off talk that his latest fight is really with Rory McIlroy.
Scheffler said trying to beat McIlroy did not drive him as he prepares for the 2026 PGA Championship, even after a run of three straight runner-up finishes on the PGA Tour. The first of those near-misses came at The Masters, where McIlroy successfully defended the title, and Scheffler became the first player since Sergio Garcia in 2014 to finish second in three successive PGA Tour events.
The rivalry talk has been easy to find because the two have spent years on the same stage. Scheffler and McIlroy have played together many times, and they went head-to-head in the singles at the 2025 Ryder Cup. But Scheffler brushed aside the idea that the chase is personal. “I would not say that it drives me,” he said. “I don’t really look for a lot of sources of outside motivation, if that answers your question.”
That answer fits the way Scheffler has described his own game for much of the year. He has spoken often about the grind rather than the grudge. “I’ve always loved that part of the journey,” he said, and then added the sentence that matters most for the scoreboard: “I don’t like losing.”
The numbers around him are still hard to miss. Scheffler has won 20 times on the PGA Tour in his career and sits third on the Career Money List behind Tiger Woods and McIlroy. He claimed six PGA Tour victories in 2025, including the PGA Championship and The Open, and this year he has added one piece of silverware while coming up short at three other events.
His latest frustration came by the smallest of margins, finishing one shot behind McIlroy in a recent event mentioned in the lead-up to this week. That is part of what gives the pga leaderboard such a sharp edge: the top two players in the Official World Golf Rankings are again arriving at the same championship with form, history and expectation stacked on both sides.
Yet the one thing that has not happened, and still has not happened, is the one storyline television graphics are waiting for. Scheffler and McIlroy have never played in the final group on Sunday at a major championship, even though they have often been the names hovering near the top when the pressure is highest. That makes the open question at this major less about who wants it more and more about whether the week finally lines up for both men at once.
Scheffler begins defending a title he has already made his own once, and McIlroy arrives as the player who just completed the career Grand Slam. The next step for Scheffler is clear too: if he can follow McIlroy and win the US Open next month at Shinnecock Hills, he would become only the seventh player to complete the Grand Slam. For now, though, Thursday evening in the UK and Ireland marks the start of another test, and another chance for Scheffler to turn a good season into a defining one.
