My goodness, it was tight. But forget about your correspondent’s deadline for this newspaper.

The final round of the 50th Players Championship last night had developed into a wonderfully enthralling affair. Even those printing presses were in a lather of excitement as proceedings unravelled at Sawgrass.

The PGA Tour’s flagship event had served up some thrilling fare despite all the harrumphing that the menu had been diminished by the absence of some well-kent, major-winning LIV Golf defectors.

It was edge of the seat stuff. On Friday, Scottie Scheffler, hindered by a niggling neck injury, had admitted he feared he may not be able to continue the defence of the title he won a year ago.

Yesterday, he attacked the Stadium course at break-neck speed and became the first player in the event’s history to win back-to-back titles. Beware the injured golfer, eh?

The world No 1’s thrilling eight-under 64 was the result of a quite sumptuous performance which underlined the all-round majesty of his game. From five shots back at the start of the final round, Scheffler thrust himself to the top with a 20-under aggregate.

An eagle on the second, where he holed his second shot from just over 80-yards, kick-started his rousing charge and the former Masters champion never let up.

Xander Schauffele, the overnight leader, couldn’t reel him in, neither could the spirited Open champion Brian Harman as they finished at 19-under.

Wyndham Clark, the reigning US Open champion and the halfway leader at Sawgrass, ensured a nail-nibbling finale and his putt to force a play-off on the last horse-shoed out. It was quite a finish. “It’s tough enough to win one Players Championship let alone two,” gasped Scheffler.

Elsewhere in the field, Rory McIlroy’s flummoxing week ended with a level-par 72 for a nine-under aggregate. It was a typical Rory performance that would lead to the kind of mass head-scratching you’d get at a meeting of the Stan Laurel appreciation society. In total, the Northern Irishman reeled off 26 birdies during the course of the week but still finished among the also-rans.

With his title-tilt petering out after an opening 65 on Thursday, which tied the Players Championship record for 10 birdies, McIlroy was left to give his views on the upcoming meeting among the player-directors of the PGA Tour and the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) governor, Yasir Al-Rumayyan, aimed at resolving golf’s civil war.

Greg Norman, the supremo of LIV Golf which is bank-rolled by the PIF, will no doubt have something to say about McIlroy’s latest comments.

“I have spent time with Yasir and the people that have represented him in LIV I think have done him a disservice, so [Greg] Norman and those guys," said McIlroy.

“I actually think there’s a really big disconnect between PIF and LIV. I think you’ve got PIF over here and LIV are sort of over here doing their own thing. So, the closer that we can get to Yasir, PIF and hopefully finalise that investment, I think that will be a really good thing.”

Away from the cut-and-thrust at the sharp end of affairs – and the LIV-related stooshie -  Glasgow exile Martin Laird endured a torrid end to his final round as he limped over the finishing line.

The three-time PGA Tour champion, who was a joint runner-up in the Players Championship back in 2012, had been on course to finish with a flourish having started his day with three birdie in his first four holes.

Laird was four-under for his round through 10 holes but a double-bogey on the 11th tempered his assault. The Scot rallied on the run-in with a brace of birdies at the 14th and 16th but it all came to the kind of jarring, juddering grind you get when you clumsily shift your gear-stick from fifth to second.

Laird, who came into the Sawgrass showpiece in fine fettle on the back of two consecutive top-10s, found the water twice on the iconic 17th and eventually racked up a crippling quadruple-bogey seven. It’s easily done at the Stadium course’s mind-mangling penultimate hole.

Laird then compounded that with a bogey on the 18th and a round that had promised so much ended with a one-over 73 and a two-under total. In an event boasting a prize pot of $25 million, Laird’s late haemorrhaging of shots, which just about required a tourniquet in the recording hut, cost him a considerable fistful of dollars. It’s a cruel old game.

It's a captivating one too, as Scheffler proved.