Scottie Scheffler shot a 60 in the second round of the Travelers Championship on Friday, then missed out on a 59 because the last two holes produced pars instead of the birdie he needed. The finish left him with one of the lowest rounds ever recorded at the event and just short of a place beside golf’s most exclusive scoring names.
He nearly became only the second man in history to post multiple rounds of 59 or lower. Jim Furyk’s 58 at TPC River Highlands a decade ago still stands as the lowest round in TOUR history, and this course has now produced two rounds of 59 or lower and seven rounds of 60 or lower in the 15-year history of the Travelers Championship. TPC River Highlands has also yielded more rounds of 60 or lower than any TOUR stop since 1997, even though it has only hosted an event since 2011.
The number that may matter most for Scheffler is the one on the greens. He gained 4.78 strokes in putting, the best statistical putting round of his career and a clear jump from the 4.18 strokes he gained in the first round of the 2021 U.S. Open. That kind of gain does more than pad a scorecard for a day; it can change how a round unfolds when every make keeps the pressure from turning into a chase.
The late pars are what keep the round from becoming something even bigger. Scheffler needed a birdie on either of his last two holes to threaten 59, and he could only manage pars. That is the difference between a brilliant 60 and a number that would have pushed him into one of the rarest places in TOUR history, where only a handful of rounds ever end with a 59 or better.
Akshay Bhatia, 24, shot 63 on Friday and climbed the leaderboard, adding another name to a day that kept turning toward future team discussions. Bhatia is a three-time TOUR winner, ranks sixth this season in Strokes Gained: Putting, and has switched to the broomstick, a change that has helped put him 14th on the U.S. points list and 16th among Americans in the Official World Golf Ranking. With the 2026 Presidents Cup still ahead and last year's Ryder Cup having no player under 28, his profile sits in the same conversation as other younger American options.
That is what makes Friday more than a single hot round. Scheffler's score showed how far elite putting can carry a player at TPC River Highlands, while Bhatia's 63 kept a separate but related question alive about who might be ready for bigger team stages next. For Scheffler, the open question is not whether the 60 was real. It is whether the putting that produced it can hold long enough to turn one great round into the start of something even better.
