Scottie Scheffler has enjoyed a successful 2026 season, but he has unquestionably been nowhere near his best.
Scheffler won his first event of the 2026 PGA Tour season and has racked up seven top-five finishes in 12 starts.
However, it has been clear to see for anyone who has watched him that something has not been quite right with his game.
We have been so used to seeing Scottie Scheffler producing almost faultless golf over the past four years, but he has looked like a shadow of his normal self at times this season.
The 29-year-old world number one’s iron play has simply not been up to scratch and he has dropped from 1st in strokes gained approach over the past few years down to 16th.
Scheffler’s 2026 season was summed up at The Memorial when he berated his caddie, Ted Scott, after finding the water with his tee shot on the par-three 16th.
Scottie Scheffler admits his golf has been ‘dull’ this year
Scheffler will be attempting to complete the career Grand Slam at the US Open this week at Shinnecock Hills.
He addressed the media at Shinnecock on Tuesday and responded when asked to sum up his season so far.
“I’d say I feel like I’ve been close most of the year. I feel like I just haven’t been as sharp as I needed to be. I think the margins in this game are so small. For me to be winning a lot of tournaments, you’ve got to just be really, really sharp.
“I feel like maybe I’ve just been a touch dull, because I think statistically I think I’m maybe leading the FedExCup, I think I’m leading the strokes gained statistics, so by no means is it a bad year. Is it up to the play I’ve had the previous couple of years? Probably not, but it’s not far off.
“I would say a lot of it is just the sharpness, and that can come from a variety of things. But sometimes, like, I’m either not making the momentum putt, or I make a sloppy bogey somewhere, or I hit an iron shot a touch thin instead of really solid, and all of a sudden it ends up in the bunker, and I make bogey instead of hitting a really good shot and making birdie.
“The margins are just so small I think in this game. I feel like this year I’ve been what I would describe as close.“
Scottie Scheffler treating the US Open the same as any other tournament
“It’s kind of a funny thing. It’s like, yeah, if I win this tournament, that would be amazing, but I think then I show up the next week, and it’s like, okay, now Scottie’s won the grand slam, he’s won all these golf tournaments. Now where do we go from here?“, Scheffler said.
“So no matter what, I think as a player and as a professional athlete, you’re never going to live up to the expectations of people. I think sometimes that’s a little bit of the fallacy in our sport is like, if I win the U.S. Open, then I’m going to be satisfied. I’ve won all the tournaments, and my career is essentially over, and I’ve accomplished everything I could want to accomplish. But I think the goal posts are always just moved further and further.
“If you took my career from where I was as a college player, I would have extremely overachieved being in this position. I wasn’t the best college player. I had a decent college career, but by no means was I a can’t-miss type of prospect.
“The guys that turned pro at the time were better than me. There were guys, you look at Collin Morikawa and Hovland and Matt Wolff, those guys were winning tournaments immediately when they turned pro, and I had a little bit of a slower burn in terms of the development of my career.
“For me, would it be a dream to win the U.S. Open? Of course. But at the end of the day, like I — the grand slam has never been a motivating factor for me. I always just wanted to be the best version of myself, and that got me this far.
“So when it comes to this golf tournament, like I said, I’m going to step on the first tee and remind myself I’ve done everything I possibly could in order to play well, and now it’s just a matter of going out there and trying to execute and kind of going back to enjoying the competition versus feeling like you have to win for some reason.“
