Shank. Hosel-rocket. Pull. Brain fart. These are concepts most golfers are very familiar with. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, on the other hand? Not so much. But those terms and their synonyms crossed the lips of the reigning Player of the Year on Friday night at Pebble Beach.
Incredibly, he was talking about himself.
Halfway through the 2025 AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, his first start of the season, Scheffler is T20 at seven under. Not bad for someone who injured his hand in a freak kitchen accident over Christmas that forced him to miss the first month of the season.
However, it’s not good enough for the undisputed best player in the world. In his post-round presser Friday night, Scheffler explained how he was struggling with “rust” in his first tournament of the year.
“I think like the last two days out here I haven’t felt, you know, at peak performance at all,” Scheffler said Friday. “I think if you look at my strokes gained ball-striking numbers, they’re probably not near what they would normally be and I think that’s just a little bit of competitive rust, kind of getting my feet back under me and playing tournament golf. “
But what counts as “struggling” for Scheffler is far different from most golfers. For example, he’s only made two bogeys through two rounds. And one came on his very first hole after a wayward drive he attributed to “a brain fart type thing.”
Another good example came on his final hole of the second round, Pebble’s par-5 18th, where he made a miraculous par save after hitting his drive onto the beach, which GOLF’s James Colgan wrote about in detail here. Scheffler joked about a different wayward drive on Friday night, saying, “Scottie’s pulling it, holy smokes.”
But none of those “struggles” involved the dreaded s-word: shank. That term arose when Scheffler was asked about his only other bogey so far in the tournament.
One reporter carefully tried to address the shot in question during Scheffler’s media scrum, saying, “Someone mentioned you might have had a ball that’s really close to the hosel?”
Scheffler responded, “Yeah, I did on, I don’t know, like 12 or something like that.”
The reporter continued, carefully, “I don’t want to use the words but —”
Before Scheffler interrupted, “No, I did. There was some things I did today that I think were just a little bit of rust.” Soon after he cleared any confusion, describing the shot as a “semi-shank.”
Scheffler’s honesty was refreshing, even if his use of the “s-word” was shocking. But he got the hole wrong. His wayward hosel-rocket came on Pebble’s par-4 11th hole on Friday, where he made his second bogey of the tournament.
And while it may constitute as a “shank” by Scheffler’s standards, it might not by anyone else’s.
After hitting his tee shot 291 yards into the 11th fairway, Scheffler had 82 yards left to the pin and was thinking birdie. But after catching the hosel of his wedge, his approach landed in a left greenside bunker, 40 feet from the hole. A poor bunker shot and a two-putt resulted in a bogey-5.
Scheffler was able to par his way home, including the heroic one on 18, to finish with a two-under 70.
Despite the shank and a little “rust,” Scheffler admitted that overall he was happy with the results so far in his first start back from injury.
“To only have two bogeys, one of them being with a semi-shank, it’s pretty good. My first hole of the tournament and then just a little rust, brain fart type thing. Other than that, I did a good job keeping my focus, keeping the golf course in front of me. Definitely 18, a little luck saved at least a bogey there.”
Scheffler tees off for the third round at Pebble Beach on Saturday at 11:56 a.m. ET, where he’ll start the day seven shots off Sepp Straka’s lead.
