‘I feel pretty bad about where I’m at’: Scottie Scheffler assesses his game

LA JOLLA, Calif. — Scottie Scheffler set the bar extremely high after a seven-win season that resulted in a third straight Player of the Year award. Three tournaments into his 2025 season, how does the world No. 1 player feel about his game?

“I think I feel pretty bad about where I’m at,” said Scheffler, who shot a final-round 66 at Torrey Pines Golf Course and finished tied for third in the 2025 Genesis Invitational.

Scheffler missed at least two starts after injuring his right hand and requiring surgery during the Christmas holiday, and his game hasn’t been sharp yet — at least by his standards. This week, he had two rounds — the second and third — where he lost strokes off the tee and, even more un-Scottie-like, two rounds where he lost strokes on approach shots, in the second and fourth rounds. That only happened twice in 2024.

Scheffler shot a 4-over 76 Saturday, his highest round on tour since the final round of the 2022 Players Championship. That spans 212 official rounds, but Saturday’s 76 was his second over-par round this season out of 12 total rounds, but he said while discussing his third round with his chiropractor on the table afterward, he wasn’t too concerned about it.

“Marnus asked me about my day. I said, ‘To be honest with you, I feel in a better spot today than I did yesterday.’ I think going into today’s round I just tried to have a better attitude. Felt like at times yesterday in the round I tried to press a little bit as I was falling behind,” Scheffler said. “I definitely, I think, paid the price for it on the back nine, but overall did a good job today of giving myself a chance. Just wasn’t able to hit all the shots there at the end.”

On Sunday, he whittled 10 shots from his score and played like a world No. 1, manufacturing pars and birdies however he could. That included a chip-in birdie at No. 5 and holing a bunker shot at No. 15. He went out in 5-under 31, climbing within a shot of the lead. It felt Tiger-like until he dropped shots at Nos. 11 and 16 when he could ill afford them.

“On the back nine I felt I could have given myself some more chances,” Scheffler said. “Put up a good fight. I didn’t have what was my best stuff this week and still found a way to give myself a chance in the tournament. A few less mistakes over the weekend and it could be a different story.”

At this time last year, Scheffler hadn’t notched a win yet, so there’s no reason to panic. He has looked frustrated at times, but in each of his last two starts, he’s shown that he’s more than capable of getting in the mix without his best stuff—and he doesn’t look very far off at all. He said he expects to defend his titles at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and Players Championship and hinted at adding another start, possibly at the Texas Children’s Houston Open, where he finished second last year in the lead-up to his Masters title defense.

“I’m trying to give myself a little bit of grace and some patience, kind of getting back into the swing of things,” Scheffler said. “I did some things in the last few weeks that I’m happy with and definitely some things that I need to improve on.”

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Scottie Scheffler made a Sunday charge at the Genesis that fell short