What Scottie Scheffler thought about playing in golfs super group at PGA Championship

CHARLOTTE, N.C.— The super group in the PGA Championship opening round was a disappointment Thursday.World No.

1 Scottie Scheffler (2-under), No.2 Rory McIlroy (3-over) and defending champion and world No.

3 Xander Schauffele (1-over) combined to go 2-over for the day.Nevertheless, Scheffler called playing with his fellow stars “always a ton of fun to get paired with those two guys.’’“What excites us the most as players is getting to play against the best competition, and having the top three guys in the world all playing together is a tremendous amount of fun,’’ he said.“You have a guy that just won the career Grand Slam [McIlroy], another guy that won two majors last year [Schauffele], and then I won a major last year, as well.“It was a fun group.

The crowd had great energy.Hopefully, [Friday] it will play a little bit better.

This morning was a bit of a struggle.All three of us had a double on the same hole in the middle of the round [No.

16].So that can kind of kill the momentum.’’That meant Scheffler — even after a double bogey — had “honors’’ at the 17th tee.“I kept the honor with making a double on a hole, and I think that will probably be the first and last time I do that in my career unless we get some crazy weather conditions,’’ Scheffler said jokingly.Of the three stars, Scheffler and Schauffele met with reporters after their rounds while McIlroy, as he’s been prone to do after a bad round, declined interview requests after his round.Eric Cole, who shot a 1-under 70, carded a hole-in-one on the par-3 fourth hole, hitting a 7-iron 184 yards.

He said it was his second ace on the PGA Tour.“It was kind of like right on the edge whether it was enough club or not, so I kind of hit a little bigger draw with the wind than I normally do,’’ Cole said.“I was concerned it might be a touch short, but then when I saw it land, figured it was going to be pretty good.’’The two club pros from Long Island struggled....