Scottie Scheffler’s 2024 was a testament to his strength of mind

Editor’s note: This story is being released in conjunction with "Scottie 24 in partnership with Rolex," the PGA TOUR’s hour-long documentary on Scottie Scheffler’s historic 2024 season. The documentary features exclusive interviews with Scheffler and those around him to provide untold stories and perspective on his performance. The documentary can be viewed on the PGA TOUR’s YouTube channel.

PLANO, Texas – With it all listed out before him, all the accomplishments and important events that filled his 2024, Scottie Scheffler can only laugh.

Nine worldwide wins. The Masters. THE PLAYERS Championship. Olympic gold and, finally, the FedExCup, a trophy that had eluded him two times before.

His first child was born. And he was arrested.

“Well, when you put the arrested part in there, it's kind of funny,” Scheffler said, laughing. “But no, it's been a crazy year. It's been a lot of fun. I'm not really exactly sure how to describe it, other than it's been a lot of fun.”

"Fun" may seem like an oversimplification for a year that packed a lifetime’s worth of events into one 12-month period. But Scheffler’s gift is his ability to keep things simple. Those around him credit that simplicity as a secret to his success.

His home course, his gym, his favorite Chipotle and his church are all within a few miles of his Dallas home. He married his high-school sweetheart, Meredith, and he’s had the swing coach, Randy Smith, since he was 7 years old, and they still train with the same sort of plastic molded grip that you would put into a beginner’s hands.

The author George Orwell once wrote: “To see what is in front of one’s nose needs a constant struggle.” Scheffler tries his hardest to win that battle as often as he can.

“I try to stay as present as possible,” Scheffler said earlier this year. “I think that was something I really learned from my college coach. At times, early in my college career, I would get distracted. I wouldn't be as focused as I needed to be. I was always putting in the time, but I don't think I was as focused as I needed to be at times practicing. I’d be distracted by whether it was school or social life or whatever it was. I'd be thinking about other things while I was doing what I needed to be focused on. And so, he was the one who kind of introduced me to the idea of compartmentalizing your life. And I look at that in terms of just being present where I am.”

Scheffler admits he’s not good at reflecting. He sometimes struggles to remember things that feel unfathomable to forget, like where he shot 59 on the PGA TOUR. During his Dec. 10 press conference after winning his third consecutive PGA TOUR Player of the Year Award, Scheffler said he shot “63 or 64” in the final round of the Olympics. It was actually a 62 – including a back-nine 29 that was arguably the best nine holes of his career – and he’d shot it just months earlier to win the biggest prize in sport. For most people, even his professional peers, that number would be burnished into their memory forever, immediately accessible whenever asked about it.

But not for Scheffler. But, after he accepts another PGA TOUR Player of the Year Award, you can see the details and stories start to flood his mind as he sits down for the final interview for “Scottie 24 in partnership with Rolex,” the PGA TOUR’s hour-long documentary on his historic season. The show was released today on the PGA TOUR’s YouTube channel.

During the interview, Scheffler tells stories that haven’t been heard before and dives into the details of his season. The No. 1 player in the world is self-deprecating about the shanks he hit in two of his wins, and honest about his own frailties.

He opens up about the depths of the putting struggles that marred the start of his season. He talks about the neck injury at THE PLAYERS and how one of his playing partners, Justin Thomas, could only laugh out loud at the wild swing that the injury caused when it first struck. Scheffler talks about walking off the golf course after the first round of the Masters and saying, “I can’t go on three more days in this tournament swinging like this,” and the small tweak that immediately fixed things and allowed him to win.

He shared about his arrest at the PGA Championship – “I didn’t have, getting to know a lawyer in Kentucky, on my bingo card to start the year,” he says (the charges that stemmed from the misunderstanding before the PGA Championship’s second round were quickly dropped) – and walks through his Olympics victory, where he quietly ignored caddie Ted Scott’s advice to aim away from the flag on one of the final holes.

“You didn’t really think I was going to aim at the security guard (away from the flag),” Scheffler said after the shot. That decision led to one of Scheffler’s final birdies at Le Golf National. And, finally, Scheffler discussed the weight of winning the FedExCup after leading the standings for almost the entire year.

“It sounds like a great movie script,” his friend and fellow TOUR player, Sam Burns, said. “I feel like it’s a lifetime in a year. It’s pretty wild to think about. Being as dominant as he was, and also having your first child born, which is very life-changing, and being arrested, which is also very life-changing, I think it just shows his mental toughness … just his ability to, once he gets out on the golf course, solely focus on that. Because there's a lot of distractions that go on in his life and I think he does an exceptional job of handling this.”

Scheffler isn’t immune from the stress and frustration that comes from being the world’s top player. His competitive fire can boil over on the golf course. At the Olympics, Scheffler shared that Scott had to talk him out of breaking his putter as they entered the back nine in the final round. But Scheffler has proven adept in handling that pressure, thanks in large part to the unconditional support of those around him.

The statistics have shown how Scheffler is a ball-striker without a peer in today’s game. But, at the start of 2024, he had to overcome struggles on the greens.

Scheffler won last year’s PGA TOUR Player of the Year Award, becoming the first player since Tiger Woods to win the honor in consecutive years, because of his incredible consistency in 2023. He had 21 top-25s in 23 starts, including 17 top-10s. But he didn’t win after THE PLAYERS in March, in large part because of his putting. His putting performance, and the constant focus on it, was wearing on him at the start of this year.

“I think I was focused too much on trying to live up to the expectations that people placed upon me of, hey, you're hitting it so good, like, you should win every week,” Scheffler said. “And it got frustrating having to answer those questions.”

Scheffler was the 36-hole leader at the first event of 2024, The Sentry, but lost strokes on the greens in each of the final two rounds and finished T5. He had another lead in his third start of the season, tied with Ludvig Åberg and Thomas Detry after the first two rounds of the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, but again had negative Strokes Gained: Putting on Saturday and finished T6 in the rain-shortened event.

It continued at the WM Phoenix Open, where Scheffler putted into a bunker on the final hole of his third round and missed three short putts on the back nine to finish T3.

“Phoenix was tough, being there towards the end and not closing out the tournament,” Scheffler said. “Those losses, they hurt a lot. They really do. We put a lot of work in to be in these positions to perform, and when you don't perform at your best, it's very frustrating. It's sad and it's tough. But you wake up and try and do your best the next week.”

The theme continued in his T10 finish at The Genesis Invitational the following week. Scheffler finished second in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green, only slightly behind winner Hideki Matsuyama, but last in SG: Putting. Scheffler’s frustration was shown when he threw his ball into the trees on one hole. The putting struggles seemed to be all anyone could focus on, and they were beginning to consume him.

“We sat down around the dinner table and I said, ‘Buddy, how are you doing?’ recalled his longtime friend and mentor, Brad Payne, the president of College Golf Fellowship. “And he said, ‘I don't think I'm doing well.’ I go, ‘That's okay.’ And as he started kind of fleshing out some of his struggles with (putting), just all the noise that was surrounding him, our natural tendency is to run from that.

“I go, ‘But where are you going to run? Where are you going to go? I mean, you can't hide from this. Wouldn't it be better if you had a louder voice that was bigger than the voices around you?’ And I said, ‘You just need a louder voice and that's your identity in Christ, period.’”

Being open and honest about his frailties and his frustrations meant that they no longer had power over him, Payne said, because he could confront them instead of deny them. For Scheffler, he left that conversation realizing that he was trying too hard to live up to others’ expectations and that he needed to return to what he loved most, competing.

“I remember going home and kind of having a reset of, you know, why do I love playing golf? Like I love to go out compete,” Scheffler said. “And so that's what I'm going to focus on doing. That was kind of the speech Teddy gave me before we went and played the TOUR Championship, because, you know, the whole year you got to answer questions about it.”

Scheffler is known for his competitiveness. His Presidents Cup teammate Keegan Bradley calls him “an absolute animal inside the ropes.” His competitiveness extends beyond basketball. Payne recalls playing gin rummy with Scheffler at this year’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Payne kept winning and Scheffler had an early tee time the next morning.

“I keep looking at my watch and I'm going, don't you have to get up in about six, seven hours?” Payne said. “He goes, ‘Yeah, but just one more. Just one more.’ And until he can be (win), he's not going to stop. And then I just said, ‘OK, how about you win?’ And I just kind of went to bed. I was tired.”

Scheffler has a burning desire to win, which at times can be consuming. Before the final round of the Masters, he told his friends, “I wish I didn’t want to win so badly.” But Payne credits Scheffler’s parents, his wife and his caddie with being exemplars of unconditional love no matter the results. And, ultimately, that is what Scheffler’s faith provides. He says often that, though he loves the victories, he does not find his identity in them.

“He can go and play the game he loves and just wring out his talent,” Payne said.

That’s what Scottie Scheffler did in 2024, to a historic extent.