Scottie Scheffler has a little reminder for those who may be worried about his slow starts.
But before we get to that, here’s a refresher: Scheffler, the best golfer on the planet, has one win and a top-12 finish in all four of his starts this season. That’s pretty good for anyone, but what’s special about him is that, in addition to his win 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. And those rough opening rounds have been enough to keep him out of the winner’s circle. He is tied for 117th in first-round scoring average this season (70.50), behind Chris Gotterup with about five full strokes (65.80).
This week, Scheffler is back at the Bay Hill Club & Lodge in Orlando, Fla., for Arnold Palmer’s Invitationala tournament he has won twice and never finished worse than 15th. On Wednesday, he was asked about those slow starts and if there’s anything he can do differently before the round to fix them. Here he offered a reality check.
“Last year on Tour I led the tournament in the first round, the second round, the third round and the fourth round,” he said. “So I’m not too worried about a very small sample size.”
He is right! How quickly we forget.
In fact, Scheffler’s opening rounds have been where he is at his best. His scoring average in the first round last year (67.45) was better than his leading average in the second (68.0), third (68.40) and fourth (68.10) rounds.
Go back another season and he led the tour in first-round scoring average (67.84) and second-round scoring average (67.53) in 2024. And then rewind another year, in 2023, and his 67.91 first-round scoring average led the tour.
So to recap: should we really be worried about the guy who has played the opening rounds better than anyone else in each of the last three years? Maybe not.
“When you look at my body of work this year, I played four tournaments, so that’s 16 rounds,” Scheffler said. “And I’ve always been a guy who’s been very good about staying in the present, doing what I have to do to go out and play well. And so in 16 rounds I’ve had 13 that have been really solid and three that haven’t been so good. So I’m still struggling at a pretty good percentage. And so if I wanted to dig the tournament completely, but I wouldn’t think about how much I’d change my approach to it.” wise.”
Scheffler begins his opening round at 10:20 a.m. ET Thursday alongside Russell Henley, which means we’re less than 24 hours away from finding out if Scheffler will buck the trend he’s not worried about in the first place.
