The unusual golf substitute starring in Scottie Scheffler’s injury recovery

It has been an unusual golf offseason for Scottie Scheffler.

Fresh off the best pro golf season of the last 25 years, Scheffler has enjoyed an extended winter vacation. An unplanned winter vacation. And one of the longest stretches of his life without golf.

Broken glass is to blame for Scheffler’s absence. Specifically, broken glass inside Scheffler’s right hand, which eventually required surgery to be removed. Scottie says he suffered the injury making Ravioli with his family on Christmas. Now it’s January 20th and he hasn’t played golf since, which has led to some … unusual forms of staying sharp.

In a media availability as reigning champ of the Arnold Palmer Invitational on Monday, Scheffler detailed his recovery from surgery, including the mental training he has undergone to keep his game tournament-ready while his clubs have remained in the safety of the garage.

“I’ve never been big on reflecting and stuff like that,” Scheffler said. “But as I’ve been sitting around post-surgery, I did take a little bit of time to go back and watch some stuff from the last year, mostly just to help jog my memory.”

Scheffler’s injury raises a strange set of questions for the two-time Masters champ. Typically the offseason is the time for pros to work on enhancements for the year ahead. Before the injury, Scheffler appeared to be on the brink of another significant enhancement, debuting a claw grip in a final 2024 victory at the Hero World Challenge. But with his injury keeping him from doing much practice in ’25, Scheffler appears to be in the opposite camp — trying his best to maintain the form that delivered him the most lucrative individual season in PGA Tour history in 2024.

“I typically have a pretty short memory with stuff,” Scheffler said. “So I went back while I was sitting around elevating my hand post-surgery, I was just sitting there. I watched some old shots, I watched some old tournaments, and I reflected a little bit, not much.”

“I just really wanted to jog my memory,” he said. “And since I wasn’t able to play golf, I tried to almost train a little bit at home where I was reminding my brain of what I was feeling over certain shots and how my hands felt on the club and stuff like that. So I wasn’t, you know, totally checking out from golf, if that makes sense.”

Thankfully, Scheffler wasn’t reduced to couch potato status for too long. Doctors gave him a 3-4 week recovery post-surgery around Christmas, and the calendar is speeding toward February. Over the weekend, video surfaced on social media showing the World No. 1 back in the gym alongside his trainer and wearing a protective brace over his injured right hand.

Scheffler says he’s hopeful to return to competitive golf at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am at the end of the month. But he admits he’s yet to make a final decision.

“I’m definitely anxious to get back, excited to get back,” Scheffler said. “But I’m also not going to rush back just to rush back.”

Scheffler is trying to thread a difficult needle. The competitor in him is dying to play, but his instinct for self-preservation is crying out to ensure he’s healthy before returning to a full-time playing schedule. No amount of film study will account for a swing that is just slightly out of sync, especially given the standard of play he’s displayed over the last 18 months.

The blessing of having played the last several years at Scottie Scheffler’s level of play is that maintaining his level of play should be enough to keep him firmly in contention most weeks. The curse is that maintaining that standard of play is hard, especially when you’ve been on the sidelines for the better part of the last two months.

The good news is that Scheffler is uniquely equipped to know if he’s reaching that standard of play. He’s been staring at it up close for the last month.