Wayne Riley has suggested why Scottie Scheffler may find it more difficult than most players to rediscover his best form if he is starting to struggle.
It has been a strange start to 2026 for Scheffler. The world number one seemed to put the golfing world on notice with his victory at The American Express in his first event of the year.
However, the 29-year-old has not kicked on. In fact, there is an argument that Scheffler has gone backwards in recent weeks. He finished tied for 24th at the Arnold Palmer Invitational this past week.
Sky Sports pundit expresses small concern about Scottie Scheffler’s future
Scheffler’s results would look outstanding on the resume of almost any other player. But because Scheffler has set such high standards over the last few years, it is jarring when he does struggle.
He has been number one on the PGA Tour for strokes gained approach in each of the last three years. But he is down in 88th in that particular category at the start of this season.
It seems inevitable that Scheffler will work everything out. But speaking on the Sky Sports Golf Podcast, Wayne Riley hinted that it cannot be completely ruled out that Scheffler does not manage to get back to that elite level.
“I don’t know what to say about Scottie Scheffler, in the respect of I want to say something but I daren’t say it because at the end of the day, it might not happen, but I’ve seen a lot of golfers with funky swings that have to marry up a lot of moves disappear from the face of this earth,” he said.
“Now I’m not going to say that’s going to happen to Scottie Scheffler, but we’ve seen it all before. Bill Rogers back in the day, you people might be going who’s Bill Rogers? Well, Bill Rogers was the number one player in the world at that time, won The Open Championship, won the Memorial, won the World Series, won the Australian Open, won in Japan, all in one year. And then, gone. Just gone.
“Now I’m not saying that that’s going to happen to Scottie Scheffler at all, but when you have to marry your feet in and your hands to catch up, sometimes the club’s stuck behind him and he flips it, he does everything his own way. Sometimes when you have to marry so many things as one, if you were to lose it, how do you glue it all back together?”
The big difference between Scottie Scheffler and Bill Rogers
Riley is correct that some players have endured baffling regressions after looking destined to smash all sorts of records.
Few would have believed it had they been told in 2017 that Jordan Spieth would go into 2026 having not won another major title.
The big difference between Scheffler and someone like Bill Rogers is that Scheffler’s dominance has been sustained over a much longer period.
Seven of Rogers’ 14 professional wins came in 1981. He would only win one more time on the PGA Tour.
Scheffler already has 20 victories on the PGA Tour, with four majors coming in that time. He has been prolific since his maiden win at the 2022 WM Phoenix Open.
Perhaps Scheffler is not going to be able to sustain the kind of success that he enjoyed across 2024 and 2025, but it is hard to see any way in which he does not continue to regularly add to his tally of victories.