Scottie Scheffler finally speaks his mind on Bryson DeChambeau cheating storm at The Open

Golf world number one Scottie Scheffler has defended rival Bryson DeChambeau and declared 'he's definitely not a cheater'. DeChambeau received a two-shot penalty during The Open after inadvertently improving his lie during his second round.

Scheffler believes that the kind of scenarios that saw DeChambeau penalised need to be better policed, with the punished superstar receiving more scrutiny than most. The 30-year-old believes that DeChambeau was careless but not malicious in his actions.

The four-time major winner previously refused to speak on the matter, revealing: "I do have a ton to say. I haven’t decided exactly what I want to say publicly yet."

And now he's spoken his mind on the situation. “I think that opens up a greater discussion that — all I can really say is I think maybe we need to be a little bit more strict in the way that we are policing guys," Scheffler said.

"But it’s a little bit of a balance because you’ve got certain guys like a Bryson who every shot he hits is going to be shown on TV. When you have camera angles that are far away, things can look different than they do when you’re right there.

“We’ve done a good job of — I don’t know, I hate saying stuff out here because I don’t want anything to get taken out of context. All I’ll say is Bryson, I’ve known him for a long time, and he’s a lot of things, but he’s definitely not a cheater.

“I’ve never seen him cheat once, whether we were having a putting contest on the putting green or chipping contest, or anytime we played amateur golf, I never saw anything suspicious.

“When you’re watching him there from that camera angle, maybe he was a touch careless around his ball, but I don’t think he did anything intentionally.

“We’ve seen penalties happen with — like you remember Jon Rahm a couple years ago at the Memorial when his ball moved in the rough, and it’s like to the naked eye, can you really tell that?

“I think sometimes it’s just a difficult position in the game of golf. When I was growing up, if this was the line between things that were — like if this was the line, here are the rules and this was the right side of it and this is when you’re doing things against the rule, you always tried to stray really far that way. I feel like at times, sometimes you see players maybe push it a little bit further than they should.“

Two-time US Open champion DeChambeau engaged in a lengthy, heated discussion with R&A rules officials before receiving the penalty. That interaction after the round saw the release of Saturday's tee times delayed.

Rory McIlroy did not believe that it mattered whether DeChambeau cheated or not and was frustrated by his actions. The Ryder Cup icon believes that DeChambeau held the tournament hostage and criticised him as a result.

"I think there's no doubt that he improved the line of his backswing," McIlroy said. "Whether it was careless or whether it was intentional, I don't think it matters. Hopefully it was careless, but I think the two-shot penalty was justified for sure."

"I won't pretend to defend Bryson," he continued. "I'm not particularly fond of him. I think a lot of it's performative. I think a lot of it's for attention.

"To hold the tournament hostage like that, and to have all of us, players, volunteers, everyone waiting on him to depart, I didn't feel like it was a great look."