ST. LOUIS \u2014 Scottie Scheffler said he was advised to pull out of this week\u2019s BMW Championship after arriving at Bellerive Country Club with hand, foot and mouth disease, a common viral illness that mostly affects small children and causes painful blisters.<\/p>\n
Scheffler, father of two young children, struggled in the opening round of in the second FedEx Cup playoff event on the PGA Tour with a two-over 72 just days after an eight-stroke victory in the FedEx St. Jude Championship. The World No. 1 rallied to finish T-12 at seven-under 273 after a closing 68.<\/p>\n
Symptoms of hand, foot and mouth disease include fever, painful mouth sores, and a rash with small blisters on the hands and feet.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo start the week it was pretty painful to grip the club,\u201d Scheffler said, acknowledging the blisters that developed on his hands. \u201cIf I was smarter maybe I would have pulled out, but I was playing so good I felt like if I could knock it out quickly and just get through the first couple rounds, I would still have a chance. But I think that’s part of my stubbornness, probably. That’s probably a strength of mine and a weakness at times.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m proud of how I fought,\u201d he added. \u201cFeel like I’m starting to heal up. My throat is still bugging me pretty good. But my hands feel normal today. I actually almost caught myself shaking hands with Cam [Young] on 18; I would have felt really bad. I was like, \u2018Oh, my gosh, I almost forgot.\u2019 So that’s good news, starting to feel better. Hopefully the throat will clear up the next couple days.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scheffler, 30, said he started to feel ill on Monday night, the day after his win in Memphis.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat was probably the most frustrating part,\u201d he said. \u201cLike I just, you know, playing really good golf, and you come out of the heat and get a little adrenaline, sometimes your body kind of crashes. Then it hit me pretty good all week. I’m still not a hundred percent now, but I’ll get some rest now and hopefully that will help.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whether he played this week or not, Scheffler was slated to lead the FedEx Cup standings at the conclusion of the BMW Championship. That designation is worth $23 million in the PGA Tour\u2019s bonus pool distributed to the top 125 on the points list.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. LOUIS \u2014 Scottie Scheffler said he was advised to pull out of this week\u2019s BMW Championship after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":55064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[1443,1438,17511,144,208,20795,82],"class_list":["post-55063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-fedex-st-jude-championship","tag-bmw-championship","tag-fedex-st-jude-championship","tag-fedexcup2026","tag-pga-tour","tag-scottie-scheffler","tag-scottie-scheffler-reveals-painful-diagnosis-that-had-doctors-telling-him-not-to-play-the-bmw","tag-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/55064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}