Golf: Matthieu Pavon relaunches at the PGA Championship

“ I'm finally done with this week in hell, we're still learning! » These are the terms used by Matthieu Pavon from Sunday evening on his X account. The 22^eworld player has just closed one of the biggest tournaments of the year in Charlotte with a mediocre 77 (+6). His total score? +17! You said spin…

“ I'm finally done with this week in hell, we're still learning! » These are the terms used by Matthieu Pavon from Sunday evening on his X account. The 22^e world player has just closed one of the biggest tournaments of the year in Charlotte with a mediocre 77 (+6). His total score? +17! Did you say wrung out? Laundry ? A bit of both. Pavon finishes… 34 shots behind Rory McIlroy, resounding winner of his 26^e PGA Tour event.

The French number one has nothing to lose this Thursday in the first round of the PGA Championship on the Valhalla course, in Louisville, Kentucky. Since Augusta, Pavon, fielded in three tournaments, has not shone, apart from perhaps a 30^e place at the end of April in Japan. A transpacific round trip, sponsor required, probably too many. In one month, his score average plummeted. It was 69.16 strokes per round from January to March, it is, since Augusta, 71.25. That’s more than two additional moves per round. At that level, it’s colossal.

Russian mountains

But all the best players on the planet have been there. These roller coasters that punctuate a very high level golfing career. Instead, ask world number 2 Rory McIlroy, still looking for a 5 at 35.^e success in Major since… 2014 and a victory at the USPGA (the former name of the PGA Championship) on this same Valhalla course. The world number two returns to form at the right time (Editor's note: victories at the Zurich Classic, in a duo with Shane Lowry, and at Wells Fargo last Sunday) to tame this 7,000 meter course and in particular the par 3 of the 14th, 230 long meters…

Matthieu Pavon has character, inherited from Michel, his father, in heaven since his son landed in the elite of world golf. In 2024, the son has played ten tournaments on the PGA Tour for three top 10s, including a historic victory at the end of January in San Diego. Unheard of in post-war French golf.

World number 1 Scottie Scheffler and his rival Rory McIllroy will appear as favorites to try to succeed Brooks Koepka, one of the 16 “rebels” of the dissident LIV circuit at the start of the Valhalla course. “I am perfectly rested. And I don’t feel rusty at all,” warned Scheffler, 27, who has just taken a three-week break after the birth of his first child and has a record of four victories (including the Masters and the Players) since the start of the season. On Sunday he could become the first player to win the first two Majors of the season since fellow American Jordan Spieth in 2015 when the US Open followed the Masters in the calendar.

Victor Perez is also in the game

The Tarbais is present this week in a tournament in which he has already played three times (12^e last year). Michel Perez, his father and former coach of Stado Tarbes, will only have eyes for him. The 98^e world player shares his first two rounds with Americans Malnati and Kitayama. Matthieu Pavon will compete alongside the American JT Poston and the South Korean Yang, former winner of this USPGA in 2009 and now aged 52.