Scottie Scheffler has a little reminder for those who might be worried about his slow starts.
But before we get to that, here’s a refresher: Scheffler, the top golfer on the planet, has a victory and finished in the top 12 in all four of his starts this season. That’s pretty good for anyone, but what’s peculiar for him is that, save for his victory at the American Express in his first start of the year, he’s opened the last three tournaments with 74, 72 and 73 in the first rounds.
Very un-Scottie Scheffler-like. And those rough opening rounds have been just enough to keep him out of the winner’s circle. He’s tied for 117th in first-round scoring average this season (70.50), trailing Chris Gotterup by about five full shots (65.80).
This week, Scheffler is back at Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, Fla., for the Arnold Palmer Invitational, a tournament he’s won twice and never finished worse than 15th. On Wednesday, he was asked about those slow starts and if there’s anything he might do differently pre-round to fix them. This is where he offered a reality check.
“Last year on Tour I led the Tour in first-round, second-round, third-round and fourth-round scoring,” he said. “So I’m not too concerned over a very small sample size.”
He’s right! How quickly we forget.
In fact, Scheffler’s opening rounds have been where he’s at his best. His scoring average in the first round last year (67.45) was better than his Tour-leading averages in the second (68.0), third (68.40) and fourth (68.10) rounds.
Go back another season and he led the Tour in scoring average in the first (67.84) and second (67.53) rounds in 2024. And then turn back the clock one more year, to 2023, and his 67.91 first-round scoring average also led the Tour.
So to recap: should we really worry about the guy who has played better opening rounds than anyone else in each of the past three years? Probably not.
“When you look at the body of work for me this year, I played four tournaments, so that’s 16 rounds,” Scheffler said. “And I’ve always been a guy that’s been really good at staying in the present, doing what I need to do in order to go out and play well. And so at 16 rounds I’ve had 13 that have been really solid and three that haven’t been as good. So I’m still batting at a pretty nice percentage. And so if I wanted to dig deep into it I could completely change how I approach tournaments, but I don’t think that would be very wise.”
Scheffler begins his opening round at 10:20 a.m. ET on Thursday alongside Russell Henley, meaning we are less than 24 hours away from finding out if Scheffler is about to ditch the trend he’s really not worried about in the first place.
