Remember back in 2023 when Scottie Scheffler gained over 20 strokes tee-to-green at the Memorial Tournament but lost 8.5 strokes putting? The world’s best ball-striker stood on the greens that week, watching putt after putt miss its mark. “It’s confusing. It’s frustrating. I’m pretty frustrated with it right now,” he admitted. What he needed wasn’t just a technical fix; he needed trust, too.

The Tour Championship in August 2023 was the turning point. Scheffler had a season when his ball-striking was good. Yet he ranked 162nd in strokes gained.

“The year I struggled a good amount on the greens was 2023,” he recently disclosed on the Pat McAfee Show. “At the end of 2023, I felt like I needed to make a change. We were coming off of the Tour Championship, and I decided to hire a putting coach, Phil Kenyon.”

Days later, Kenyon flew in from the UK, and they worked together before the 2023 Ryder Cup. That decision gave him good results.

“Made some changes, immediately saw some benefits early in the year, the next year,” Scheffler explained. “We saw some small improvements at the beginning of the year with some technique stuff.” Then came Bay Hill in 2024. “We had looked at a bunch of different putters and ended up going with just a generic spider putter,” Scottie Scheffler recalled.

The mallet that came down required a mindset shift.

“Before in the past, when I’d made changes with my putting, it was like, if I tried it for one week and it didn’t work, I’ll just move on to the next thing. And that wasn’t really a good way to get better. You needed to really give it a chance.”

Scottie Scheffler won Bay Hill with the spider putter. In 2024, he won seven official PGA Tour events, including the Masters, The Players, and the Tour Championship. He also won a gold medal at the Olympics in Paris.

“After winning Bay Hill, I’m like, well, I can’t switch putters now. And so I used it again the next week.”

The final transformation came during the 2024 offseason.

“Phil had almost built up a little bit of a rapport with me. I trusted him after a full year of work,” the 29-year-old explained. “The claw was something that he had wanted me to try since the beginning. But, I just hadn’t worked with him enough, didn’t really trust him enough to make such a drastic change.”

That admission shows how to create a trust at the highest level of golf. They tested the claw grip in the Bahamas with undeniable results.

“I felt like I could improve my putting inside 15 feet. And that’s the results that we saw in 2025 was a big improvement in my putting from that distance. Right now, we’re in a really good spot.”

The 2025 season proved it. Despite missing the first month after cutting his hand while cooking on holiday, he returned with six wins and 17 top-10 finishes in 20 starts. Those wins included the PGA Championship, the Open Championship at Royal Portrush, and a Memorial Tournament defense that erased the painful memories of 2023.

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Scottie Scheffler’s consistent game earned him another Player of the Year honor

Scottie Scheffler had a great 2025 season on the PGA Tour, winning the Player of the Year award for the fourth year in a row. Only Tiger Woods has done this before.

Scheffler won six tournaments, including two major championships (the PGA Championship and The Open Championship), and finished in the top ten many times. In a competitive field, he stood out for his ability to maintain his form week after week.

Scheffler’s success was built on his amazing ability to score consistently. He also won the Byron Nelson Award for having the lowest scoring average for the third year in a row, with an average of 68.131. He was the only player to lead the Tour in scoring average from the first round to the last, a record that hadn’t been broken since Tiger Woods in 2000. This level of scoring regularity allowed him to do well in every event that he participated.

“I think overall the thing that I’m most proud of when I look at the last couple years is just consistency,” the 19-time PGA Tour winner said on Monday. “It’s not very easy to just show up and finish in the top 10 each week. I think that’s something that’s very difficult to do, and something I’m very proud of, bringing the intensity that I need to in these tournaments and being prepared as I need to in order to perform well week in and week out.”

PGA Tour CEO Brian Rolapp captured the magnitude: “Scottie’s consistent level of success has been nothing short of spectacular as he continues to chase history on the PGA Tour, and we’re excited to see what he will deliver in 2026.”

Scottie Scheffler’s transformation was marked by humility, patience, and trust. Now with his short game matching his elite ball-striking, he stands as one of golf’s best players.