AUGUSTA, Ga. — Scottie Scheffler is in a much different place than he was three years ago.
The 2022 Masters Tournament champion has crept into veteran territory and is noticing the changes in his approach.
“I think in terms of preparation, I think I valued much more rest going into these types of weeks,” the 27-year-old said Tuesday. “I think when I first came out in my career, I didn’t really value rest as much as I should have. I was a really big practicer, and I would say I probably practiced too much at tournaments. So, trying to work on getting quality rest and being ready to compete.”
The top-ranked golfer in the world, Scheffler enters this week’s Masters with wins at the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill and the Players Championship in back-to-back weeks. He tied for second at the Texas Children’s Houston Open two weeks ago and has seven top-10 finishes in his last eight starts.
He played a practice round Tuesday with 20-year-old rookie Nick Dunlap, who made sure to pick Scheffler’s brain as much as possible.
“He’s in a difficult spot where he should be in college right now. He should be going to class, and instead, he’s playing in the Masters. He asks us a lot of questions, and I try to give him the best answers that I can,” Scheffler said. “Yeah, I feel like when I first came out, there were a lot of older guys that gave me really good advice. And I’m just trying to kind of pay it forward to the next group of guys.
“I think I’m seven years older than Nick, which is pretty wild. I still feel like the young guy out here, and I’m kind of trending now towards the older end of the spectrum now, which is really weird.”
Legendary caddie unlocked Scottie Scheffler’s potential at Augusta
Before Scheffler’s Masters win in 2022, he had a chance meeting with legendary Augusta National Golf Club caddie Carl Jackson. The rest, as they say, is history.
“Well, I’m not going to expand too much on Carl’s secrets in front of people, but … No, it was maybe my second Masters, it was either my second or third. I sat kind of in the back of the caddie house with Carl. And, yeah, he gave me a yardage book that had some of the — where he — I think he called it grain, where some of the slopes are. And it’s just a yardage book that has some arrows in it.”
Scheffler still studies the yardage book to this day.
“I’m not going to tell you where the arrows are pointing,” he said, laughing. “But it’s something that I’ll kind of review at night and I always look at it in the lead-up to the tournament just because there is kind of some weird stuff that goes on around the golf course. And, I mean, he’s such a peaceful guy. So, it was really nice just kind of listening to him talk about the golf course.”
