For the second year running, there is something of a question mark hanging over Scottie Scheffler heading into The Masters.
The world number one has won on the PGA Tour this season. However, his form in recent weeks has been underwhelming by his incredible standards.
Scheffler also withdrew from the Texas Children’s Houston Open due to the birth of his second child. With that, his most recent result remains his tied for 22nd finish at The Players Championship.
So it is incredibly difficult to know what to expect from Scheffler at Augusta National over the coming days.
Smylie Kaufman assesses Scottie Scheffler’s chances of winning The Masters
Of course, Scottie Scheffler has won The Masters twice already. Meanwhile, he finished fourth 12 months ago despite looking to be nowhere near his best.
That start to his 2025 season could largely be put down to a hand injury. This year, however, there have been no obvious signs that Scheffler is dealing with any sort of issue, particularly given that he won The American Express in his first start.
Speaking on The Smylie Show ahead of Thursday’s opening round, Smylie Kaufman insisted that he would not be at all shocked to see Scheffler in the mix at Augusta National.
However, he did express some concern about his recent form.
“I still feel very good about Scottie this week. It’s probably in the eight [out of 10] range. I’m not quite at the nine or 10 which I would be at for Scottie. But I think when you look at Scottie Scheffler this season and you look at all of his statistics, you’ll notice that the approach stats are down. He’s currently strokes gained this season 82nd approach. This is a guy who’s lived in the top three over the last three years strokes gained approach. It’s been his superpower,” he said.
“But the other thing that we’ve noted if you’ve watched previous shows with Scottie coming off this entire west coast swing, and the Florida swing, is that he’s been going back and forth between drivers a little bit. What I wanted to look at, it’s an interesting stat, it’s fairway proximity from the middle, and this was interesting to me. In 2024, he was first in that category, 18 feet. So it’s basically talking about how wide your range is, and over the last two years, it grew to 23 feet last year, which is still 23rd, which is still very good. Remember this is a very long player. This year, it’s grown to 30 feet which is 97th, so we’ve seen a trend of his misses being a little bit wider, his iron game being not quite as sharp. How does that transfer to Augusta National? You’ve got a little bit of room off the tee, but if you do hit some wild shots, so if you think about some specific shots like the first hole, if you miss left there, you’re looking at bogey, left at two.
“Typically for Scottie, he’s missing it left off the tee. But I’ve been seeing also a right miss that happened at The Players Championship, where on Thursday, he hit all of his drives to the right. It’s like man, this is weird.
“Then you also throw in the first round scoring average, which he’s led that statistic over the last couple of years of the best scoring average on Thursdays, but this year, he was averaging 70.67 which is 96th. I will say that rounds two, three, and four, he’s in the top 10 in scoring average, and we’ve seen him ending up having a chance to win some of these golf tournaments.
“Overall, I think it comes down to tightening up those driver misses, getting a little bit better with his wedge play, because I think he’s been a little bit off in hitting his numbers this year, way off at times, like man, I’ve never seen Scottie miss his numbers like this so often, so just getting a little bit better at hitting his numbers, but leaning into what makes him great, which is the most underrated skill that he has which is his chipping ability around Augusta National. His ability to get up and down.
“And you go back and look at some years that he has really played well at this golf course, he won here in 2022 and 2024, and in those years, he had gained – in 2024 – eight strokes around the green. And then also in 2022, he gained 5.7 around the green.
“So you get that with also a good driving week or a good iron week, and then throw in here the last little bit I’ll give you is that his putting, he’s 17th in strokes gained putting this year on the PGA Tour. He’s leading in birdie average. He’s still hitting a lot of greens. He’s just not hitting it quite as close. He’s not hitting quite as many fairways. But I still think that all the things I told you aren’t that bad. These are all really, really positive things for anybody else. We just hold Scottie Scheffler to a higher standard.”
Why Scottie Scheffler may have the perfect reason to put his frustration behind him
Scheffler may well be freed up by getting away from the course for a few days. It was noticeable that he was tense over his last few starts, particularly when the media would ask about his recent results.
Ahead of The Players Championship last month, Scheffler was asked about how he copes with expectations given that the season probably had not gone as well as he would have liked.
“I think that’s kind of a funny question, because if you flipped my season around and it was like, okay, I finished, what did I finish last week? Like 24th or something. 24th and 12th, and like third and fourth, and a win. Would your question be the same if I was coming from third, fourth, win?”
Scheffler’s response was fair. However, the question also seemed a valid one. If Scheffler is not driven by results, then surely, he cannot be happy with how he has performed over the past few months.
There have been a number of uncharacteristic mistakes. And, as Kaufman notes, he has got off to several poor starts this year.
The two major wins in 2025 were hardly surprising because he did appear to be gradually improving in the weeks after his return from injury. It was ominous that he registered a top five finish at The Masters while not looking like he would contend.
Scheffler won two of his first five starts after Bennett was born in 2024. So it would not be at all surprising if Remy’s arrival helped him put any frustration on the course behind him and marked a turning point in his year.
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