Plenty of eyes will be on Scottie Scheffler this week, with the world number one making his first PGA Tour start of the season at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
It has been well over a month since Scottie Scheffler competed in a golf event. The 28-year-old has been sidelined recently with a hand injury sustained on Christmas Day. So there is potentially a question mark over how he will fare at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.
Of course, Scheffler is looking to build on one of the all-time great years in 2025. He won nine times worldwide in 2024, including at the Masters, the Players Championship and the Tour Championship. It was no surprise that some put Scheffler’s season alongside one of Tiger Woods’ better years.
What was so impressive about Scheffler was how easy he made everything look. His demeanour rarely changed as he kept firing iron shots into birdie range. And there were only a handful of times where Scheffler failed to finish inside the top 10.
Rory McIlroy suggests what Scottie Scheffler may do better than Tiger Woods
The question is now whether Scheffler can sustain that over a much longer period, as well as whether he will be able to establish himself as an all-time great.
It is perhaps notable that Rory McIlroy believes that one thing Scheffler does is potentially better than anyone who has ever played the game.
“I’ve never, this is anyone, this is Tiger, this is in the history of golf. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a golfer play as many bogey-free rounds as Scottie. He just doesn’t make mistakes. It’s so impressive,” he said.
“He plays the right shot at the right time over and over and over again. You obviously need the technical ability to be able to do that, but he doesn’t make mistakes. And when you don’t make mistakes on the golf course, the game can become pretty easy.
“So super impressive. If he continues to do that, he’s going to be the dominant force that he was last year and the year before that.”
The remarkable numbers behind Scheffler’s 2024 season
Scheffler posted just 10 over par rounds in 2024. And when you look a little closer at the rounds where he did struggle, the numbers become even more remarkable.
Four of those rounds came at Pinehurst at the US Open – and it is hard to criticise anyone who failed to break par around that particular course. Meanwhile, another over par round came on the Saturday at the PGA Championship, little more than 24 hours after he had been arrested outside the Valhalla gates.
He has clearly got a monumental way to go before he is truly being mentioned in the same sentence as the likes of Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus. Woods made 142 cuts in a row between 1998 and 2005. However, he is definitely on the right path.
And if he continues to make few mistakes, then that gap is inevitably going to close in the coming years.
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