HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — A Masters green jacket wasn't enough for Scottie Scheffler.
Scheffler was running on emotional fumes fresh off his four-shot victory at Augusta National, but full of purpose that more than made up for his lack of preparation for the RBC Heritage. The result not only was similar, it has come to be expected.
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HILTON HEAD ISLAND, S.C. (AP) — A Masters green jacket wasn't enough for Scottie Scheffler.
Scottie Scheffler holds the trophy after winning the weather delayed RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler waves after winning the weather delayed RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler hits his tee shot on the 18th hole during the completion of the weather delayed final round at the RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler waves after winning the weather delayed RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler waves after making a putt on the 16th hole during the completion of the weather delayed final round at the RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler waves after winning the weather delayed RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler holds the trophy after winning the weather delayed RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
He rarely missed a shot. He gave little hope to those chasing him. And he walked away from Harbour Town on Monday morning with another victory that extended a dominance not seen since the peak years of Tiger Woods.
“I didn't show up here just to have some sort of ceremony and have people tell me congratulations. I came here with a purpose,” Scheffler said after polishing off a 3-under 68 for a three-shot victory.
Victory was inevitable — Scheffler had a five-shot lead with three holes to play when the final round, delayed 2 1/2 hours because of storms Sunday afternoon, was suspended by darkness. It's starting to feel that way whenever he plays.
Scheffler now has won four of his last five starts, the exception a runner-up finish in the Houston Open when he misread a 5-foot birdie putt that would have forced a playoff.
He considered this one of the tougher wins because it followed the Masters.
“Coming off the high last week to going into here, not really with a ton of energy, not really with a ton of prep work,” Scheffler said. “I think it's underrated how difficult it is to do the stuff that Tiger was doing, and win like every single week. It takes a lot out of you emotionally and physically, especially major championships.”
Turns out he had plenty left in the tank.
Scheffler now has 40 consecutive rounds at par or better, a streak that began at East Lake in the Tour Championship last August. His position at No. 1 in the world is so great that he became the first player since Woods to crack the 15-point average mark.
“It's very impressive,” Patrick Cantlay said. “He's played great for a while now — a number of years — and it seems like he is playing the best golf of his life right now.”
The only competition Monday morning was for second place.
The storms brought cold weather and a strong wind. Scheffler missed the 18th green to the right, chipped safely to 18 feet and two-putted for bogey. That ended his streak of 68 consecutive holes with no worse than a par.
“I hit driver, 3-wood into there,” Scheffler said. “So I’m going to count that as a par for myself.”
Sahith Theegala birdied the 16th hole, saved par from a bunker on the par-3 17th and closed with a par for a 68 to finish alone in second, a difference of $666,667 than if he had finished in a three-way tie for second.
“Even though I finished second, I felt like I was never really in it to win there. Scottie was just so far ahead,” Theegala said.
Cantlay (68) and U.S. Open champion Wyndham Clark, who finished his 65 on Sunday before the storms, tied for third.
Scheffler finished at 19-under 265 and earned $3.2 million. That brings his season total to nearly $18.7 million in just 10 tournaments.
The good news for the rest of the PGA Tour: Scheffler won't show up again until the PGA Championship the third week in May. He headed back home to Dallas, where his wife his expecting their first child sometime next week.
Scheffler was staked to a one-shot lead starting the final round and chipped in for eagle on the second hole. Before long, he had a four-shot lead and never showed any signs of coming back.
“I got off to a good start yesterday and kind of just kept it going from there,” he said.
The week wasn't the smoothest start for Scheffler, who was six shots behind after an opening round that included a shank from the bunker on the third hole for a double bogey. He didn't drop another shot the rest of the week until it no longer mattered.
About the only thing that went wrong for Scheffler was the celebration. His caddie, Ted Scott, went for an elevated chest pump and Scheffler just laughed at him without moving.
About 400 spectators waiting along the 18th fairway were allowed to fill a corner of the grandstands as Scheffler approached. He turned and waved his cap toward them after tapping in his final stroke of another masterpiece.
Such is Scheffler's dominance that his last seven victories have come against fields that had at least eight of the top 10 players in the world.
The last player to run off a stretch like this — four wins and a runner-up — was Woods at the end of 2007. Woods then won his first three PGA Tour starts (and one on the European Tour) to start 2008.
Scheffler now has 10 titles on the PGA Tour in a span of 51 tournaments dating to his first victory in the 2022 Phoenix Open.
“It does not get boring,” Scheffler said. “I think hitting a really well-struck golf shot close to the pin is like an addicting feeling.”
AP golf: https://apnews.com/hub/golf
Sahith Theegala celebrates after a birdie on the 16th hole during the completion of the weather delayed final round at the RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler holds the trophy after winning the weather delayed RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler waves after winning the weather delayed RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler hits his tee shot on the 18th hole during the completion of the weather delayed final round at the RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler waves after winning the weather delayed RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler waves after making a putt on the 16th hole during the completion of the weather delayed final round at the RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler waves after winning the weather delayed RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
Scottie Scheffler holds the trophy after winning the weather delayed RBC Heritage golf tournament, Monday, April 22, 2024, in Hilton Head Island, S.C. (AP Photo/Chris Carlson)
NEW YORK (AP) — Hope Hicks, who served as Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign press secretary and went on to hold various roles in his White House, took the witness stand in his New York hush money case on Friday.
Her testimony on the trial's 11th day was the latest in a frenzied second week of witness testimony and followed that of forensic analyst Douglas Daus and paralegal Georgia Longstreet.
Lawyer Keith Davidson concluded his testimony Thursday after spending nearly 6 1/2 hours on the stand over two days. He laid out for jurors details of his negotiations with Michael Cohen and the National Enquirer on behalf of Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, not shying away from an election night realization that his efforts might have contributed to Trump's 2016 win.
Daus also took the stand that day, testifying about what he found on Cohen's cellphone. Among other things, Daus said Cohen had nearly 40,000 contacts saved to the device.
Prosecutors have said that Trump and others conducted a scheme to illegally influence the 2016 election by purchasing and burying salacious stories that might hurt his campaign.
Trump is accused of falsifying internal business records to cover up hush money payments — including $130,000 given to Daniels, a porn actor, by Cohen — recording them instead as legal expenses.
Trump has pleaded not guilty to 34 felony counts of falsifying business records.
The case is the first-ever criminal trial of a former U.S. president and the first of four prosecutions of Trump to reach a jury.
Currently:
— Donald Trump moves much of his White House campaign to New York
— Key players: Who’s who at Donald Trump’s hush money criminal trial
— The hush money case is just one of Trump’s legal cases. See the others here
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Here's the latest:
Hope Hicks, who served as Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign press secretary and went on to hold various roles in his White House, took the witness stand in his New York hush money case on Friday.
Her testimony on the trial’s 11th day was the latest in a frenzied second week of witness testimony and followed that of forensic analyst Douglas Daus and paralegal Georgia Longstreet.
Donald Trump has paid his $9,000 fine for violating the gag order in his hush money criminal trial.
The former president paid the penalty Thursday, ahead of a Friday deadline. Trump’s legal team supplied the court clerk’s office with two cashier’s checks — one for $2,000 and one for $7,000.
Judge Juan M. Merchan ordered Trump to pay the fine after holding him in contempt of court and finding that posts he made online about his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen, porn actor Stormy Daniels and the composition of the jury had violated the gag order.
Merchan is currently weighing a prosecution request to hold Trump in contempt again and fine him $1,000 for each of four more alleged violations from last week. Merchan has warned Trump that he could be jailed if he keeps breaching the gag order.
A government agency at the heart of Donald Trump’s separate classified documents criminal case got a name drop at his New York hush money trial on Friday.
Georiga Longstreet testified that she used the National Archives and Records Administration’s archive of the official presidential account on Twitter, now known as the social platform X, to help verify the authenticity of Trump’s account.
Longstreet noted that Trump’s official government account, @POTUS45, frequently reposted posts from Trump’s @realdonaldtrump account.
There was no visible reaction from Trump to the mention of the National Archives, whose pursuit of records he took from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after his 2020 election loss led to charges alleging that he illegally hoarded classified documents.
Georgia Longstreet, a paralegal with the Manhattan district attorney's office, was called as the next witness in Donald Trump's hush money case on Friday.
She has been assigned to the Trump case for the past year and a half and her role has been to review publicly available records relevant to the case, including Trump’s social media accounts on the social platform X — formerly known as Twitter — Facebook, LinkedIn and Truth Social.
Picking up where he left off on Thursday, Trump attorney Emil Bove plied Douglas Daus, the forensic analyst, with a set of deeply technical questions Friday meant to suggest that Michael Cohen may have doctored a 2016 recording played in court the previous day.
As evidence, Bove noted that the audio cuts off suddenly, as well as “gaps” in the handling of the phone that Daus agreed were “not ideal.”
Prosecutors say the abrupt ending of the recording was the result of Cohen receiving another call. Under questioning from Bove, Daus said there was no record of an incoming call in the phone’s metadata — but said it would be difficult to say for sure without looking at call log data from Cohen’s phone carrier.
“In many ways, we’re just going to have to take Michael Cohen’s word for it, aren’t we?” Bove said.
“Yes,” Daus replied.
With that, Bove concluded his cross-examination.
Before testimony resumed in Donald Trump's hush money trial, Judge Juan M. Merchan ruled to prevent prosecutors from showing the jury a photograph of Trump with Billy Bush and soap opera actor Arianne Zucker at the time of the infamous “Access Hollywood” recording.
Trump lawyer Todd Blanche had asked for the image to be excluded from the trial, pointing to a recent court decision overturning Harvey Weinstein’s rape conviction. In that case, the appeals court ordered a retrial because the judge had allowed testimony at trial unrelated to the allegations.
Merchan said the appeals court decision “doesn’t really factor into this” case, noting that the ruling had not laid out any new law, but nevertheless agreed to block prosecutors from introducing the photograph.
Prosecutors had said the image would help establish the timeline of the revelations about the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump could be heard bragging about grabbing women without permission.
Merchan has previously ruled the 2005 tape cannot be played in court for jurors, but said prosecutors can still question witnesses about the recording.
Trump lawyer Emil Bove on Friday morning resumed cross-examination questioning of Douglas Daus, a forensic analyst at the Manhattan district attorney’s office who extracted recordings, text messages and other evidence from two of Michael Cohen’s iPhones.
Judge Juan M. Merchan started the trial day also by clarifying that Donald Trump’s gag order doesn’t prohibit him from testifying on his own behalf, apparently responding to comments the former president made after court the day before.
“The order restricting extrajudicial statements does not prevent you from testifying in any way,” Merchan said, adding that the order does not in any way limit what Trump says on the witness stand.
Merchan directed his comments to Trump and his lawyers, saying it had come to his attention that there may have been a “misunderstanding” regarding the order.
Speaking to reporters before heading into court on Friday, Donald Trump clarified comments he made the day before about his gag order, saying it does not stop him from testifying in the case but it does keep him from “talking about people and responding when they say things about me.”
After court adjourned on Thursday, Trump had responded to questions about what he’d thought of the day’s testimony.
“I’m not allowed to testify. I’m under a gag order,” he said, causing some confusion. The gag order bars him from making public statements about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to the case.
He also commented on the latest job numbers showing that U.S. employers scaled back hiring in April and said they’re “horrible.”
Donald Trump has arrived at the courthouse in Manhattan for the 11th day of his hush money trial.
Hope Hicks, who served as Donald Trump's 2016 campaign press secretary and went on to hold various roles in his White House, could testify in his hush money trial as early as Friday.
The two people who described her forthcoming appearance to The Associated Press insisted on anonymity to discuss internal trial preparations.
Hicks spoke with Trump by phone during a frenzied effort to keep his alleged affairs out of the press in the final weeks before the election.
Associated Press writers Eric Tucker in Washington and Jake Offenhartz in New York contributed to this report.
Despite not yet having testified in Donald Trump's hush money case, Michael Cohen has been very present in the courtroom — in audio recordings of conversations he had and in witness testimony.
On Thursday, jurors heard a taped call between Cohen and Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels' former attorney, wherein Cohen could be heard telling Davidson about a conversation he'd had with someone believed to be Trump.
“I can’t even tell you how many times he said to me, ‘You know, I hate the fact that we did it.’ And my comment to him was, ‘But every person that you’ve spoken to told you it was the right move,’” Cohen said in the recording.
The panel also heard a recording of Cohen briefing Trump in September 2016 on the plan to buy former Playboy model Karen McDougal’s story. That particular recording included Cohen detailing that he'd spoken to then-Trump Organization Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg about “how to set the whole thing up with funding.”
Cohen, who is the prosecution's star witness, was Trump's lawyer and personal fixer at the time.
Court proceedings in Donald Trump's hush money case will end early on Friday to accommodate an important appointment one of the jurors has in the late afternoon.
Judge Juan M. Merchan announced the scheduling change just before adjourning court on Thursday. Court will end at 3:45 p.m. Friday, about 45 minutes earlier than normal.
Donald Trump is expected to return to court Friday morning for the 11th day of his hush money trial as the second week of witness testimony wraps up.
Thursday's proceedings saw the former president facing yet another contempt hearing, this time over four more prospective violations of his gag order.
While Judge Juan M. Merchan did not immediately rule on the sanctions request from prosecutors, he told defense attorneys he was concerned about three of the potential violations — including comments that Trump made about the political makeup of the jury. Merchan said he wasn't worried about a comment Trump made last week calling former Enquirer publisher David Pecker a “nice guy.”
Prosecutors said they were only seeking fines and not jail time over the potential violations.
Trump is barred under a gag order from speaking publicly about witnesses, jurors and some others connected to the case. He was fined $9,000 on Tuesday over nine online posts.
The introduction has been updated to correct the spelling of the last name of forensic analyst Douglas Daus, from Daul.
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan criminal court in New York, on Friday, May 3, 2024. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday,, May 3, 2024. (Doug Mills/The New York Times via AP, Pool)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday,, May 3, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump appears at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Friday,, May 3, 2024. (Jeenah Moon/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (Charly Triballeau/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump sits inside Manhattan Criminal Court, Thursday, May 2 2024. (Mark Peterson/Pool Photo via AP)
Former President Donald Trump arrives at Manhattan criminal court before his trial in New York, Thursday, May 2, 2024. (Charly Triballeau/Pool Photo via AP)
