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World No.1 Scottie Scheffler is in the driving seat at the Tour Championship – but discussion after his opening round at East Lake wasn’t about his golf.

No, the Masters champion inadvertently directed conversation down a decidedly more uncomfortable route.

Scheffler revealed he had suffered a “weird little injury” at the Open which he believes might have cost him a shot at the Claret Jug. It turned out to be a pilonidal cyst.

“Probably TMI,” he said.

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“It’s an infection at the top of your butt crack. You can look it up. It was really hard for me to bend down. It was really hard for me to make a swing on Sunday. Walking was actually extremely difficult.

“I don’t know if any of you have ever had something like that, but if you talk to someone that does it is excruciatingly painful. It was brutal.”

A pilonidal cyst occurs when hair punctures the skin and becomes infected.

Although a member of the DP World Tour’s medical team performed a procedure on Sunday at St Andrews in order to relieve the pressure, it took another week for the pain to subside.

So how did it come about?

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“I’m not going to say it here,” Scheffler added.

“I’ll tell you after because that would really be TMI.

“I didn’t ever really plan on telling anybody. It’s kind of one of those things you put on the back burner, and it’s stuff that happens.

“Guys deal with injuries over the course of the season, and that one popped up at a wrong time for me when I was playing really well.”

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