Scottie Scheffler is going to be the favourite to win the Players Championship in the eyes of many as the world number one seeks a historical achievement at TPC Sawgrass over the coming days.
Scottie Scheffler is in an unfamiliar position at the start of the 2025 season. You would now have to go back more than 12 months for the previous occasion when the 28-year-old went four events without winning on the PGA Tour.
Scheffler’s preparations for 2025 were somewhat derailed by the hand injury he sustained over Christmas which delayed his return to action. But he has shown glimpses of his quality in his first four events of the year.
And he is returning to a happy hunting ground this week. Scheffler made history by becoming the first player to retain the Players Championship title in 2024. He is now looking to join Jack Nicklaus as the only three-time winners of the event.
Justin Thomas shares the part of Scottie Scheffler’s game which is better than so many realise
Scheffler’s most recent victory came at the Hero World Challenge, with Justin Thomas the player he caught in the final round to go on and win by six in Albany.
Thomas also played alongside Scheffler during the 2024 Players Championship. And speaking to the media ahead of this week’s event, the two-time PGA Champion explained how difficult it is to try and take things from Scheffler’s game when his success is built on so much more than how he swings the club.
“The times I’ve spent playing with him, or even watched, his demeanour and his mental toughness and the way he plots his way around golf courses and how he just wears people down – playing the Hero with him in December last year, that was a good learning experience for me because I’ve been in contention a lot the last couple of years that I haven’t won, but hadn’t had a lead and played with it and got to watch the guy who’s won more than anybody in my own group – and just playing with him in that situation, it sucked because he beat me, and I played well,” he said.
“But it was a learning experience for me to just watch how he plotted his way around and I feel like very similar to what I’ve done many times when I’ve won and how I’ve handled it mentally, and I think that’s what he does better than anybody else. And then you add that with the quality of his golf, and it’s why he’s been so tough to beat over the years. So I think there’s a lot of areas of his game that you can obviously choose to try to copy or emulate, but I think his mental side is what separates him more than people realise.”
What Thomas told Scheffler last week about his performance at the Players Championship last year
Scheffler’s performance at the 2024 Players was all the more remarkable because he did need to receive treatment on a neck injury he was dealing with. And it appears that his performance in the circumstances left a lasting impression on Thomas.
Thomas – who also has a victory at Sawgrass on his resume – noted that he cannot quite believe how well Scheffler was able to fare around the course while struggling.
“I remember it very well. I was talking to him, joking about it last week because obviously he had the neck situation last year and went on to win, and, I didn’t know, but I guess his neck, something came up at the Masters last year, and obviously he won there. So I was like, ‘clearly, you need to tweak your neck more, because you’ve won two pretty big golf tournaments doing it’,” he said, when asked about his memories from last year.
“I just remember and I told him last week that I think I was more infatuated watching him go around the course with a messed up neck than I was playing my own game. I think watching great players or any player win without their best stuff or get it around the golf course without their best stuff is very impressive, and I think speaks volume to how they are as a player, and he was far from 100 percent and I audibly laughed out loud at his tee shot on 12 because his reaction made even Scottie’s follow through and body language look absurd. And then I felt pretty bad because I realised he did it because his neck was messed up.”
Sawgrass has thrown up all sorts of surprises over the years, so it is normally extremely dangerous to expect the favourite to triumph. However, Scheffler is threatening to be one of those generational talents who rewrites the history books.
Certainly, Thomas would clearly not be at all surprised to see him make it a hat-trick this week.
Receive exclusive golf news and updates twice a week to your mailbox
