Defending at the Masters no easy task for Scheffler

For most golfers, an off year may mean failing to make cuts, finishing outside the top 50 or 125, or not winning a certain amount of money.

Scottie Scheffler, however, is not most golfers. After one of the most successful seasons in PGA Tour history, which included seven wins and a record $29 million, he measures success differently. And so far in 2025, Scheffler’s game is not where it was a year ago and not fully to his liking.

As he gets set to defend his title at the Masters, there are questions as to just how well he’s playing compared to a year ago. In 2024, he had two wins and six top-10 finishes in eight starts ahead of the year’s first major.

This year, he’s logged three top-10s in six events, including a runner-up finish at the Texas Children’s Houston Open, his final start before the Masters. For mere mortals, that performance, along with the $3.3 million he’s won, would be more than acceptable. But Scheffler wants more.

“I definitely feel better,” he said after a solid tournament in Houston where he finished tied for second. “But I feel like I can still clean up a few things in my swing.”

Part of the reason for the slower start was a freak injury to his palm, caused when a wine glass he was using to cut pasta out of a sheet broke. It required surgery to repair and Scheffler missed the first month of the 2025 season.

“I think it would be silly to say that it didn't set me back a little bit,” he admitted, “because I had to take a good amount of time off. I'm a right-handed golfer. So, any sort of injury you have to that hand, especially a surgical one, is going to have some sort of effect.”

It’s not that Scheffler has struggled thus far this season. Only three of his 24 rounds were over par and he’s been no worse than 27th place after any round. He sat third in Strokes Gained: Total ahead of the Masters, an indication that his game is strong in every major category.

The only eyebrow-raising category where his game has shown signs of inconsistency is putting. The only event where he’s finished inside the top 10 in total putts was the Genesis Invitational. His season-worst came at The Players where he was tied for 59th.

Last year, Scheffler struggled with his putter at the start of the year before frustration led a change of putter styles. That seemed to turn around his game on the greens and made him nearly invincible.

This year, he’s also shown uncharacteristic signs of frustration during some rounds, whether it be a grimace after a missed short putt or a slam of his club into his golf bag, as he did in Phoenix, following a poor shot.

But overall, as he left Houston for Augusta, he smiled and declared his game fit.

“I liked the way my swing started to feel over the weekend,” he stated of his play in Houston. “I felt like I holed a good amount of putts this week, especially under pressure on the back nine today. Felt like I hit my lines really well and did some good things out there. So definitely some positive momentum going into next week.”

Defending a title at the Masters is no easy task. Only three players – Jack Nicklaus, Nick Faldo and Tiger Woods – have repeated. Scheffler will have to raise his game to hold off the best players in the world who are equally hungry for a green jacket.

At the top of that list is Rory McIlroy, who is making his 11th attempt at winning the career Grand Slam. He comes in as arguably the hottest player on the PGA Tour with two victories and nothing worse than a tie for 17th in the five starts he’s made. He leads the tour in Strokes Gained: Total and a handful of other categories. Still, he looks at Scheffler and realizes he needs to play even better if he hopes to pass him.

“I think it's hard to not look at what Scottie's done the last couple years and not take notice and sort of try to dig in, okay, why has he been able to separate himself a little bit from the rest of his peers at this point,” McIlroy said. “To me, one thing he was definitely doing a little better than me the last couple years was that course strategy and course management and that's something that it's forced me to look at and maybe be a little more thoughtful and diligent with that side of it.”

Scheffler will prepare for this year’s edition of the Masters the same way he has before. He’ll work at home in the Dallas area with his coach Randy Smith, and try to clean up any of the deficiencies in his game. He will likely play a round or two with some of the other PGA Tour players in the area such as Jordan Spieth and Tom Kim. And he’ll pack up the green jacket he won last year and get ready to return it permanently to the club, as past champions must do after one year.

Most of all, he’ll look forward to the short trip down Magnolia Lane, which he says is unlike any drive in golf.

“You pull in, and everything else just kind of melts away,” he said. “I forget about a lot of stuff that's going on. I just kind of get really in tune to just try to play golf and get ready and prepare to play the golf course. Pulling into the gates is always a really special feeling. It feels to me like we're going into a different world.”

The only question remaining is whether it will once again be Scottie’s world.