The Hero World Challenge will offer up plenty of talking points, with Tiger Woods likely to provide an update on his own fitness, while Scottie Scheffler will make his first competitive appearance since the Ryder Cup.
Of course, the Hero World Challenge is not recognised as an official PGA Tour event. Nevertheless, the week in Albany often tends to be significant.
Certainly, the 2024 event saw Scottie Scheffler make an emphatic statement after already winning eight times worldwide earlier in the year.
Who will win the Hero World Challenge?
Scheffler ended up winning by six shots after posting a final round 63. He retained his title from the previous year.
He also sent an ominous warning to all of his rivals with a change he made that week.
The prediction Tiger Woods made about Scottie Scheffler during the 2024 Hero World Challenge
Scheffler spent the 2024 season as an average putter on the PGA Tour. He was 77th for strokes gained on the greens. Nevertheless, he managed to obviously enjoy huge success.
But that did not put the world number one off trying to improve further.
The time off after the Tour Championship meant that Scheffler was comfortable debuting a claw grip on certain putts at the Hero.
And that prompted tournament host Tiger Woods to make a prediction about Scheffler which proved to be scarily accurate.
“It just came about. I saw it on Wednesday. I thought what is that thing! [Things were going pretty well], now they are going even better,” he said, when asked about the grip change.
“You know he can do it either way, he has got amazing feel. You see that with his short game and trajectory control into the greens. If he has consistent weeks or consistent times on the greens, he is going to finish top 10 every week and pick off a lot.”
Obviously, few could have foreseen that Scheffler would end the month with a hand injury which ended up delaying his start to the 2025 season.
And it took the 29-year-old a little while to get going upon his return. However, an underwhelming spell for Scheffler still included top 10 finishes at Pebble Beach and the Genesis Invitational.
His worst result in that time was a tied for 25th finish at the WM Phoenix Open – a tournament where he went into the back nine on Sunday with an outside chance of winning before falling away in dramatic fashion.
But from the Texas Children’s Hospital Open onwards, Scheffler went on to register 15 consecutive top 10 finishes.
That included six victories, including wins at both the PGA Championship and The Open Championship. You would now have to go back to March for the last time Scheffler finished lower than eighth.
The dramatic improvement Scottie Scheffler has made with his putting in 2025
The key difference from 2024 is that Scheffler is now one of the best putters on tour. He moved up to 22nd on the PGA Tour for strokes gained on the greens in 2025.
Few would have argued with Woods when he mentioned Scheffler finishing in the top 10 every single week. It is not a controversial statement by any means.
However, when you actually see what it is has taken for Scheffler to do it 15 times in a row, it becomes an unbelievably impressive achievement.
Tiger Woods’ verdict on Scottie Scheffler’s swing
That is particularly the case as Scheffler is not someone who is tasked with a number of tournament-defining shots each week.
He has won a third of those events in that run. So there have been plenty of moments where he faced a shot which could have led to his challenge unravelling if he got it wrong.
Scheffler rarely got it wrong.
And as the 2025 Hero World Challenge looms, it is hard to know how exactly Scheffler will be able to improve further in 2026.
But you would not be surprised if he has something up his sleeve.
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