If Scottie putts, he will win.
That phrase was uttered ad nauseam across the 2024 PGA Tour season. It became synonymous with Scottie Scheffler’s historic campaign, which featured nine worldwide victories including the Masters, a successful defense at The Players Championship, the Tour Championship and a gold medal at the Paris Olympics.
That phrase is no longer uttered in 2025 because, well, Scheffler learned how to putt after implementing the claw grip last winter. Now fully recovered from a freak ravioli-making offseason injury caused by a broken wine glass on Christmas, the No. 1 player in the world is reconfiguring how this season may be defined once it ends this fall.
A new phrase to describe Scheffler’s chances on a week to week basis? If Scottie shows up with his normal preparation, he will win.
Scheffler has started his summer with a scorcher. A winner in three of his last four tournaments, he tied the PGA Tour’s 72-hole scoring record at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, joined Tiger Woods as the only players to go back-to-back at the Memorial and raised the Wanamaker Trophy at the PGA Championship.
Scheffler has made it clear that he has found his groove, even if this run looks different than the one he went on last year.
When Scheffler won in 2024, it was frequently because he was throwing 100 mph fastballs that were painting the corners. No one could touch him. He had a different speed to his game. He overcame large deficits in the final rounds of the Players and Olympics by playing near-perfect golf. He ran away from fields that summer and fall thanks to near-perfect golf.
Scheffler may not be dropping every shot right next to the pin like he did a year ago, but his game is somehow even better. Following his win at the Memorial, the underlying metrics of his game moved him past perhaps his most heated rival, a prior version of himself.
Scheffler is no longer that ace from 2024; instead, he is a five-tool player, which is even more dangerous when it comes to winning tournaments. Off the tee, he impresses with a blend of distance and accuracy. That iron play of his still remains the top in the game. His hands are forever underrated as his soft touch around the greens gets him out the rare pickle in which he finds himself. Now, the putts are falling; he ranks 27th on the PGA Tour in that area.
All this before the greatest strength in his game — the five inches in between his ears — is even mentioned.
“You can will yourself to hit and execute the right way, but you can’t force the ball to go into the hole,” Scheffler said. “A lot of times, you got to let these rounds come to you, and I feel like I’ve improved at that skill over time. Golf’s not a game where you can just use that brute force. You have to be patient, you have to. It tests you each and every time you go out and play.
“It’s really like you’re looking in the mirror each and every time you go out and play golf. It’s as challenging mentally as it is physically.”
Mixed together, this concoction paves the numerous avenues on which Scheffler can march into the winner’s circle. This past month has been emblematic of that. It’s been “choose your own adventure” for the 16-time PGA Tour winner, and he has certainly done that.
Scheffler didn’t miss in Dallas and won by eight strokes. He scrapped and clawed his way through the first two rounds in Charlotte before clutching up down the stretch of both weekend rounds to win the PGA by five. At the Memorial, he didn’t do anything that jumped off the screen outside of a five-hole stretch to close his third round that assured him of the outright 54-hole lead, which he went onto convert for the ninth straight time at a PGA Tour event.
He pulled the correct lever of his game at the correct time throughout the week. When his ball striking misbehaved, he called upon his short game — and vice versa. Like a conductor in front of an orchestra, he signaled to the brass, then the woodwinds and finally the strings — all in perfect harmony with each section playing off the other.
Scheffler continued to show his game is not singular in its greatness. It’s not reliant on the ball striking like it may have been in the past. His putter is no longer a weak link but now a weapon. There is no one fatal blow he strikes. Instead, Scheffler wins by one million tiny cuts that chop his competitors into pieces, leaving the trophy free to be placed into his hands after 72 holes.