History made to broken – can McIlroy or Speith rise to the challenge of the legend ?? Full details in comment

The PGA Championship record for leap-frogging on the final day leaderboard belongs to Payne Stewart, who jumped over 10 players on Sunday in 1989 at Kemper Lakes Golf Club.
History made to broken – can McIlroy or Speith rise to the challenge
HISTORY BREAKER? History, they say, is made to be broken. It will take just that for Rory McIlroy or Jordan Spieth to make history on Sunday at the PGA Championship. Pic: AP Photo/Matt York

History, they say, is made to be broken. It will take just that for Rory McIlroy or Jordan Spieth to make history on Sunday at the PGA Championship.

McIlroy (trying to snap a 10-year major-winning drought) and Spieth (trying to complete the missing piece in his career slam quest) both started the final round at Valhalla Golf Club at 8-under par – tied for 19th place and seven shots behind co-leaders Xander Schauffele and Collin Morikawa at 15-under par.

One of them would need to break history to make history on Sunday. While Shane Lowry and Schauffele proved the possibility that a record score of 61 could be out there, McIlroy or Spieth shooting 61 would get them to 18-under just three shots ahead of where the co-leaders who haven’t shot worse than 3-under all week.

The record for the most strokes behind the leader overcome by a PGA Championship winner in the final round is seven, first set by John Mahaffey in 1978 at Oakmont and matched two years ago by Justin Thomas at Southern Hills. So McIlroy or Spieth would have to match that rally to lift the Wanamaker Trophy.

The bigger issue, however, is how many players stood between them and the podium at the start of Sunday’s final round – 18 players, many of them former majors champions or top-10 players in the world.

Dating back to 1990, only one PGA champion jumped over as many as four players in the final round of a PGA Championship – Thomas in 2022 when he passed six guys ahead of him at the start of the day before eventually winning in a three-hole playoff against Will Zalatoris.

The PGA Championship record for leap-frogging on the final day leaderboard belongs to Payne Stewart, who jumped over 10 players on Sunday in 1989 at Kemper Lakes Golf Club. Stewart shot 67 in the final round to overcome a six-shot deficit at the start behind 54-hole leader Mike Reid.

Third on that leap-frog list behind Thomas’ effort in 2022 was Bob Rosburg in 1959, who passed five guys on the final day to overcome a six-shot deficit and win at Minneapolis Golf Club.

Steve Elkington (1995) and Lanny Wadkins (1977) also overcame six-shot final-round deficits to win, but neither had to jump past so many players in front of them.

Rain-softened Valhalla produced a crowded leaderboard with 15 players starting Sunday within five shots of the lead at double-digits under par – a reasonable deficit to consider being within arms reach of victory.

However, for any of the six players who started the final round at 10-under – Thomas, Tony Finau, Harris English, Thomas Detry, Austin Eckroat and Lee Hodges – they will have to leap past nine players including four major champions Morikawa, Shane Lowry, Bryson DeChambeau and Justin Rose.

“Everybody has a scenario that runs in their head of them potentially winning the tournament, but how that happens, you don’t know,” said Thomas, a two-time PGA champion and local Louisville favorite. “I feel like I have done the most important part of putting myself at least within striking distance, and I’m going to need a really good front nine to work my way in the mix.

“But I feel like I’m fully capable of that of how I’m playing, and it would be nice to have a chance there on the back nine.”