Much ado has been made about Scottie Scheffler’s game as of late, and it might be nothing.
Scheffler carded a bogey-free 5-under 67 in Round 3 of The Players on Saturday after narrowly making the cut a day prior. With that 67, early rounds of 72 and 73 are all but forgotten as Scheffler, at least for now, seems to have emerged from a brief, but frustrating rut.
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“I was a little sharper today than I was the first two days,” Scheffler said. “I felt like I was swinging it better each day of the tournament. Today hit a few more fairways and was able to give myself a few more looks for birdie.”
The question everyone has been asking is, ‘What’s wrong with Scottie’s form?’ But is there really anything wrong when you’re ranked No. 1 in the world – by a large margin – and haven’t finished lower than T-25 since August 2024?
Scheffler began 2026 with a win at The American Express in January before slow starts contributed to him slowly dropping further and further down the leaderboard in recent appearances: T-3 at the WM Phoenix Open, T-4 at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, T-12 at The Genesis Invitational.
His most recent outing prior to The Players was a T-24 finish at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where he recorded multiple bogeys (or double bogeys) each round and failed to break 70.
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Scheffler’s performance is only being called into question because of how dominant he has been in the past couple years; since 2024, the 29-year-old has won 16 times around the world.
The questions seemed to reach a peak on Tuesday, when Scheffler was asked about managing expectations and proceeded to point out his expectations “are more shot by shot” versus the media’s expectations being “week by week.”
“I think, when you look at the perspective from the media, the media is always trying to create a story,” Scheffler said in his pre-Players press conference. “Which can be a great thing. I think that’s part of your job. But when it comes to my golf game and my expectations of myself, my expectations all are based around what I want for me mentally on the golf course and being committed to what I can do, and controlling that aspect. And so far throughout this season I’ve been really good in some spots and then some other spots I feel like I can improve in terms of my commitment to the shot.”
One of those spots is his driver; Scheffler switched to TaylorMade’s Qi4D model at the API last week but switched back to the Qi10 model this week.
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“How do I feel about the driver? Good,” Scheffler said after the third round at TPC Sawgrass.
Scheffler has set such a high standard for himself that if he’s not winning or in contention every Sunday, it leads people to question whether he’s falling apart. In reality, every player’s game ebbs and flows.
After his round of 67 on Saturday, the two-time Players champion was asked whether he found anything in a Thursday evening range session that saw him hitting balls in the pouring rain.
“Did I find anything? I think that would imply that I was lost, which is not the case.”
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Scheffler has the chance to keep his top 25 streak alive, but sitting at T-27 as of publishing, he’s not of the mindset that he’s going to pull off the comeback to win his third Players title – a feat that would tie Jack Nicklaus for most wins ever at the tournament.
Five or six shots back, maybe. Eight (or possibly more) shots back would be a tall task.
“Not unless it starts blowing like 30 miles an hour,” Scheffler laughed when asked if he had put himself in a spot to make a comeback on Sunday.
More than likely, Scheffler is focused on that shot-by-shot improvement as the calendar inches closer to April and, with it, major season.
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Will those preparations take Scheffler to another tournament between now and the Masters?
“Undecided.”
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