Scottie Scheffler has a clear roadmap to reach the first Major of the year. The key words are freshness and energy. Therefore, from now until the big date of the Masters of Augusta, which will take place from April 11 to 14, the undisputed World Number One will only play two tournaments. The first is the THE PLAYERS Championship, which will start this Thursday in Ponte Vedra Beach, and the second will be the Houston Open, two weeks before the appointment with Magnolia Lane.
Scheffler has proven to himself that playing the week before a Major and, more specifically, before the Masters does not suit him. “I have never been one of the players who go to Augusta to play before the week of the Masters. I prefer to take advantage of the time at home. This year I also have no plans to go there before the week of the Masters. I will do it as always. I will arrive the previous Sunday and I will have the normal preparation. I played once the week before the Masters and I had enough. I don’t think it’s good for me. I need to have fresh legs for a course like Augusta, so a week of rest and on Sunday we go there,” he explained after his victory at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Very few doubt right now that Scheffler is the big favourite to win the Masters in a month. If he maintains his usual level from tee to green and manages to extend the good moment with the putter shown at Bay Hill, he is unapproachable. Precisely, regarding the putt, beyond the hard work he has done in the preseason with Phil Kenyon, and continues to do, Scottie has assured that what weighs most in his positive evolution is the mental part, and more exactly the attitude towards the putts made and missed.
“Thursday was a very important day for me. I started terribly with the putter. I threw a very bad putt to start the day and missed a couple more putts in the first holes. When I got to the practice field, the conversation with Ted was not about what we needed to fix, but about what we had done well. That’s what it’s about. All our work is focused on the process and not on the results. We told ourselves that we were doing well and that we had to continue that way, it was not about finding anything new,” he argued.
In this same line, Scheffler is clear that all golfers must assume as soon as possible that there is no perfection. “If you try to play perfect golf, it doesn’t work. That doesn’t exist. I think sometimes people’s perception from the outside is that golf looks very easy when you watch it on TV. It really does. But when you come out here, and compete, and play on the PGA TOUR, it’s quite difficult. That’s the approach I’m looking for. The last year has been somewhat frustrating because I knew I could hole more putts and win tournaments and not doing it was tough. So, from Thursday I take the good attitude. I kept doing the same, waiting for the results and not forcing them. If you hit a good 9 iron from the fairway you know it will be close to the hole, yes a gust of wind may affect, but it won’t be far away. However, you can throw a very good putt of four meters and make it.
The shots are something very difficult because you can’t force them. I can hit a very good 9 iron from the middle of the fairway and occasionally I will get a gust and it won’t come out well, but in the worst case it won’t be far from the hole. But with the putt, I can throw a very good putt of four meters, it does tie and doesn’t enter, or I can throw a very bad putt and stay 30 centimeters short. In both cases, I make two shots. That’s why it’s better to focus on the process than on the result,” he pointed out.
By the way, he made it clear that he will continue using the Spider putter model that he put into play at the Arnold Palmer. “I would say yes, I insist, not so much for the results, but because I am very comfortable to align and aim. It helps me,” he concluded.
