DUBLIN, Ohio (AP) — Scottie Scheffler felt he was hitting all the right shots and only had 13 straight pars to show for it Saturday on a tough day at the Memorial. As usual, he had a powerful finishing kick, and the world's No. 1 player wound up in a familiar spot.
Scheffler, six shots behind when he made the turn, had four birdies over the last five holes for a 4-under 68 at Muirfield Village, giving him a one-shot lead when Ben Griffin missed a 3-foot par putt on the final hole.
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Nick Taylor hits from the 10th tee during the third round of the Memorial golf tournament Saturday, May 31, 2025, in Dublin, Ohio. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Jordan Spieth gestures after his putt on the first green in the third round of the Memorial golf tournament Saturday, May 31, 2025, in Dublin, Ohio. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Ben Griffin chips onto the ninth green during the third round of the Memorial golf tournament Saturday, May 31, 2025, in Dublin, Ohio. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Scottie Scheffler hits from the third tee during the third round of the Memorial golf tournament Saturday, May 31, 2025, in Dublin, Ohio. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Scottie Scheffler gestures after his putt on the 18th green during the third round of the Memorial golf tournament Saturday, May 31, 2025, in Dublin, Ohio. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
“I don’t know what the scoring average was today, but I was definitely proud of the way I finished and it was really challenging,” Scheffler said. “Through 13 holes, I felt like I was playing really good and I was only even par. Just a hard course.”
And it became a hard task for everyone chasing him. Scheffler has won the last eight times when he had the 54-hole lead, including two weeks ago at the PGA Championship. He goes after his third win in his last four starts.
No one is throwing in the towel, not with five players within five shots of the lead when so much can happen so quickly at Muirfield Village, as Saturday showed.
And that starts with Griffin, who won his first individual PGA Tour title at Colonial last week and didn't sound the least bit bothered that Scheffler was the guy he was chasing.
“Obviously, Scottie Scheffler’s the best player in the world, but No. 1 can be beat,” Griffin said. “I feel like right now ... you know, I beat him last week. Obviously, he’s coming off a major win. But, yeah, I feel like he obviously can be beaten, and I’ve just got to keep the pedal down and make a lot of birdies because I know he’s going to, as well.”
The scoring average for the 57 players who made the cut was 73.9, and three players failed to break 80. Scheffler, the only player to break par all three rounds, was at 8-under 208.
Griffin became the only player this week to reach 10-under par when he ran off three straight birdies starting at No. 6. And then he gave it all back with four straight bogeys, three of those bogeys from either the fairway or the tee box.
Scheffler was lurking, as always. He has an uncanny knack of hanging around and winding up with the low score by the end of the day. This was no exception.
“I did see that Ben got to 10 under, but it’s not going to change my play in the middle of a Saturday,” Scheffler said. “This golf course is really challenging and no lead’s safe around this place. I knew if I kept going and played a decent round, I would be in somewhat of a position to chase him down tomorrow.”
He holed a 10-foot birdie putt on the 14th — his first of the day — followed getting on the collar of the green at the par-5 15th for a simple birdie. He hit 7-iron into the wind to 8 feet for birdie and closed with one last birdie from just inside 15 feet that ultimately gave him the lead.
He's no longer chasing, and he's a tough customer to track down.
Jordan Spieth also was in the chase, tied with Scheffler in second place at one point, until he failed to save par from a bunker on the 17th and drove into the creek on the 18th for a closing bogey and a 72. He was five shots behind, feeling better about his game.
There was just one problem. Spieth talked about the fun of being in the mix, of making six birdies on a tough course, of needing to keep moving in that direction. And then he paused.
“The bummer for me is Scottie's at 7 or 8 (under) and he just ... you can't count on him shooting even tomorrow,” Spieth said. “So it would take something special. But all in all, just trying to shoot a few under each day out here.”
Nick Taylor of Canada wound up three shots behind after a 74, and for that he was thankful at the end. Taylor went into the water and made double bogey on the diabolical par-3 12th, followed that with a bogey and was sliding out of contention. And then he holed out from fairway for eagle at the 14th, birdied the next hole and played that four-stretch in even par.
The best round belonged to Sepp Straka, a two-time winner on the PGA Tour this year. He posted a 66 as the leaders were just getting started and was in the group at 3-under 213 that included Spieth and Ryder Cup captain Keegan Bradley (68).
Patrick Cantlay and Rickie Fowler each shot 69 and joined Shane Lowry (73) at 214. It's a long way off, and it can feel even longer with Scheffler the one they are chasing.
“It's a tough golf course. I’ll be trying to chase him down,” Taylor said. “He’s obviously playing phenomenal, so I’ll have to play some of my best golf to be in the hunt there with the last few holes to go. But it is playing so difficult that being a few under early will get me back in there.”
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Nick Taylor hits from the 10th tee during the third round of the Memorial golf tournament Saturday, May 31, 2025, in Dublin, Ohio. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Jordan Spieth gestures after his putt on the first green in the third round of the Memorial golf tournament Saturday, May 31, 2025, in Dublin, Ohio. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Ben Griffin chips onto the ninth green during the third round of the Memorial golf tournament Saturday, May 31, 2025, in Dublin, Ohio. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Scottie Scheffler hits from the third tee during the third round of the Memorial golf tournament Saturday, May 31, 2025, in Dublin, Ohio. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
Scottie Scheffler gestures after his putt on the 18th green during the third round of the Memorial golf tournament Saturday, May 31, 2025, in Dublin, Ohio. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki)
MEXICO CITY (AP) — As uncertainty simmers in Venezuela, interim President Delcy Rodríguez has taken the place of her ally President Nicolás Maduro, captured by the United States in a nighttime military operation.
Rodríguez served as Maduro's vice president since 2018, overseeing much of Venezuela’s oil-dependent economy and its feared intelligence service, and was next in the presidential line of succession.
She's part of a band of senior officials in Maduro's administration that now appears to control Venezuela, even as U.S. President Donald Trump and other officials say they will pressure the government to fall in line with its vision for the oil-rich nation.
On Saturday, Venezuela’s high court ordered her to assume the role of interim president, and the leader was backed by Venezuela’s military. In a televised address, Rodríguez gave no indication that she would cooperate with Trump, referring to his government as “extremists.”
“The only president of Venezuela, President Nicolás Maduro,” Rodríguez said, surrounded by high-ranking civilian officials and military leaders. “What is being done to Venezuela is an atrocity that violates international law."
Rodríguez, a 56-year-old lawyer and politician has had a lengthy career representing the revolution started by the late Hugo Chávez on the world stage.
Her rise to become interim leader of the South American country came as a surprise on Saturday morning, when Trump announced that Secretary of State Marco Rubio had been in communication with Rodríguez and that the Venezuelan leader was “gracious” and would work with the American government. Rubio said Rodríguez was someone the administration could work with, unlike Maduro.
In doing so, observers said the government was effectively turning its back on the opposition movement it maintained was the winner of Venezuela's 2024 elections just weeks before.
On Sunday, Trump’s tone shifted as Rodríguez and other Venezuelan officials continued to rail against the Trump administration and assert that they were in control of the country.
"If she doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro," Trump said of Rodríguez in an interview with The Atlantic.
In comments later Sunday night, Trump said Rodriguez is “cooperating."
He added that he wanted her to provide “total access,” from oil facilities to basic infrastructure like roads, so they can be rebuilt. But Trump also reiterated his threat that she could “face a situation probably worse than Maduro” if she doesn’t cooperate with the U.S.
Asked as he flew on Air Force One back from Florida to Washington about Rodriguez’s comments in which she said she stands by Maduro, Trump said, “I don’t think it’s pushback,” noting that “you hear a different person than I hear.” When a reporter told Trump that Rodriguez had called the operation a kidnapping of Maduro, Trump responded, “It’s all right, it’s not a bad term.”
But Trump's comments followed Rubio having asserted in TV interviews on Sunday that he didn't see Rodríguez and her government as "legitimate” because he said the country never held free and fair elections.
A lawyer educated in Britain and France, the interim president and her brother, Jorge Rodríguez, head of the Maduro-controlled National Assembly, have sterling leftist credentials born from tragedy. Their father was a socialist leader who was arrested for his involvement in the kidnapping of American business owner William Niehous in 1976, and later died in police custody.
Unlike many in Maduro’s inner circle, the Rodríguez siblings have avoided criminal indictment in the U.S., though the interim president did face U.S. sanctions during Trump's first term for her role in undermining Venezuelan democracy.
Rodríguez held a number of lower level positions under Chávez's government, but gained prominence working under Maduro to the point of being seen as his successor. She served the economic minister, foreign affairs minister, petroleum minister and others help stabilize Venezuela's endemically crisis-stricken economy after years of rampant inflation and turmoil.
Rodríguez developed strong ties with Republicans in the oil industry and on Wall Street who balked at the notion of U.S.-led regime change. The interim president also presided over an assembly promoted by Maduro in response to street protests in 2017 meant to neutralize the opposition-majority legislature.
She enjoys a close relationship with the military, which has long acted as the arbiter of political disputes in Venezuela, said Ronal Rodríguez, a spokesperson for the Venezuela Observatory of Rosario University in Bogota, Colombia.
“She has a very particular relationship with power,” he said. “She has developed very strong ties with elements of the armed forces and has managed to establish lines of dialogue with them, largely on a transactional basis.”
It's unclear how long Rodríguez will hold power, or how closely she will work with the Trump administration.
Geoff Ramsey, a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington research institute, said Rodríguez's firm tone with the Trump administration may be an attempt to “save face.” Others have noted that Maduro's capture required some level of collaboration within the Venezuelan government.
“She can’t exactly expect to score points with her revolutionary peers if she presents herself as a patsy for U.S. interests," Ramsey said.
Venezuela’s constitution requires an election within 30 days whenever the president becomes “permanently unavailable” to serve. Reasons listed include death, resignation, removal from office or “abandonment” of duties as declared by the National Assembly.
That electoral timeline was rigorously followed when Maduro’s predecessor, Chavez, died of cancer in 2013. However, the loyalist Supreme Court, in its decision Saturday, cited another provision of the charter in declaring Maduro’s absence a “temporary” one.
In such a scenario, there is no election requirement. Instead, the vice president, an unelected position, takes over for up to 90 days — a period that can be extended to six months with a vote of the National Assembly.
In handing temporary power to Rodríguez, the Supreme Court made no mention of the 180-day time limit, leading some to speculate she could try to remain in power even longer as she seeks to unite the disparate factions of the ruling socialist party while shielding it from what would certainly be a stiff electoral challenge.
—— Janetsky reported from Mexico City and Debre reported from Buenos Aires, Argentina. Associated Press writers Joshua Goodman in Miami, Darlene Superville aboard Air Force One and Jorge Rueda in Caracas, Venezuela contributed to this report.
FILE - Venezuela's Vice President Delcy Rodriguez takes part in talks with the Russian Foreign Minister during in Moscow, March 1, 2019. (AP Photo/Pavel Golovkin, File)
FILE - Vice President Delcy Rodriguez, left, smiles at Venezuelan Defense Minister Padrino Lopez, as they take the route that the body of late President Hugo Chavez was transported to his final resting place, during the activities marking the 10th anniversary of Chavez's death, in Caracas, Venezuela, March 15, 2023. (AP Photo/Matias Delacroix, File)
