Shaking off slow start, Scottie Scheffler enters PGA Championship flashing dominant form seeking third major

After missing the start of the season due to a holiday ravioli-making incident, Scottie Scheffler spent the first few months of 2025 appearing to be just fractions away from the top form that carried him to dominance over the PGA Tour across 2023-24. While he never lost his status as the world’s No. 1 player and managed to post a top 25 finish in each start, he struggled to get over the line and capture that first win of the year. 

That all changed during a home game two weeks ago just outside Dallas as he torched TPC Craig Ranch for a historic victory at the CJ Cup Byron Nelson, tying Justin Thomas and Ludvig Åberg for the lowest four-round score in PGA Tour history with a 253 (-31). It was the kind of performance we had not seen from Scheffler since he won the Arnold Palmer Invitational, The Players Championship, the Masters and the RBC Heritage last season — one of the greatest stretches of golf played since prime Tiger Woods. 

With that win in Dallas, Scheffler was able to quiet any rumblings about whether his grip on the top of the game was slipping. As he explained Tuesday ahead of the 2025 PGA Championship, which he enters as a 5-1 favorite per BetMGM, his Byron Nelson victory was a performance he built towards but had not been capable of completing until that weekend.

“I talked a little bit about how my game was trending, and it was nice to sort of see some results from a lot of hard work to start the year,” Scheffler said. “I feel like my game’s in a good spot, so I think it’d be silly to say I can’t ride some of that momentum into this week.”

Specifically asked what has been trending well for him, Scheffler responded: “Well, I just felt like my swing was coming around. I felt like my ball-striking maybe held me back a little bit at the beginning of the year, and I drove it really nice last week, hit some really good iron shots, was able to give myself a lot of looks around that golf course and was able to hole some putts as well.” 

Scheffler’s stats remain eye-popping in 2025, but he hadn’t been converting them into wins until two weeks ago. He’s first in strokes gained total (2.394), tee-to-green (1.954) and approach the green (1.224), and second off the tee (0.716). Those are all the same ranks as last year, but they are all also just fractionally lower raw figures. His putting has improved (77th to 19th), but a dip around the green (17th to 95th) has negated the gains on the greens.

Scheffler noted that, each time you win, there’s a “feeling of that burden being lifted.” Even though he won seven times in 2024, the next victory is never assured. That’s particularly the case in today’s game where his competition at the top of the sport is stiffer than ever and the margins are so much slimmer. 

Rory McIlroy has found a new level to his game and continues to play the best golf of his life in his mid-30s, snapping a decade-long major drought and completing the career grand slam at the Masters to free himself from his own burden. Bryson DeChambeau has unlocked the full potential in his game, going from a mad scientist to a beefed-up bomber to now one of the best all-around players in the sport.

While those two and Scheffler occupy much of the discussion at the top of the game, the depth behind them is extremely strong. Xander Schauffele picked off two majors last year, Justin Thomas appears to be back in elite form, and the list of players who enter each major with a legitimate chance to win grows longer by the year.

For Scheffler, external expectations have grown to an almost impossible level in the face of such competition. When he went on his run of four wins in five starts last spring, the conversation began about whether golf had it’s next dominant, Tiger-like figure. The statistical comparisons were extremely compelling, and his consistency made it impossible not to put him in that conversation. 

However, one of the biggest on-course differences between Scheffler and Woods is the environment around them. The gulf between prime Tiger and the rest of the field was massive. While Scheffler jumped to the top of the world and seems to have no intentions of letting go, it’s harder to create separation from the other elite players in today’s game. 

As Scheffler noted Tuesday, it’s simply difficult to win golf tournaments regularly. Still, despite those lofty expectations, he is uniquely equipped with the kind of perspective needed to shrug off all of that outside noise and keep himself present by enjoying the never-ending quest golf presents. 

“It’s always motivating when you get beat, and in golf, you tend to get beat a lot. You don’t really get to win that many tournaments,” Scheffler said. “Rory has been off to a great start this year, and he’s definitely improved and made some changes in his game from last year. There’s always little things I’m trying to do to get better, and I think that’s why we keep coming back.

“Golf is kind of an endless pursuit of getting the best out of yourself, and I’m looking forward to continuing to do that as the year goes on.” 

That’s an extremely valuable perspective to have, one that is perhaps the greatest separator of an elite player from an elite talent. Scheffler appears uniquely immune to the rollercoaster of golf. That isn’t to say he doesn’t enjoy the highs of winning or get frustrated at the lows when things are off, but he does have that intangible factor of being able to quickly move on to the next task at hand and remain in the present. 

Starting Thursday, he has another chance to take an important step in his already stellar career. Scheffler has yet to win a major championship outside of Augusta, Georgia, despite nine top 10s in 14 appearances at the other three tournaments. His performances at the PGA Championship have been particularly strong with four top 10s, including a runner-up in 2023, but he hasn’t quite been able to get his hands on a Wanamaker Trophy. 

Scheffler is well aware that his legacy will eventually be defined by his collection of majors and diverse array of trophies. He doesn’t have to look far to see how that can play out, as McIlroy spent a decade winning everything but those four biggest events and got asked, almost exclusively, about those shortcomings. That wore on McIlroy, and the burden only got heavier with each major that passed and each Masters that fell by the wayside. That’s among the reasons so much emotion poured out of him when he completed the career grand slam with a green jacket last month.

Now, Scheffler and McIlroy enter the PGA Championship so far removed from the field that, as a duo, they are +200 to win the PGA Championship against every other player teeing it up at Quail Hollow (-285).

Scheffler seems more ambivalent about legacy talk, and it might play to his benefit as his career continues. He shrugs off questions about his place in the game’s all-time hierarchy and seems truly and genuinely focused on the task at hand. It’s not because he doesn’t want to be great; it’s just not something he can worry about in the here and now. 

This week, there’s a golf tournament to try and win. We can tally up the trophies and see where he stacks up once he’s done.