This will haunt Scheffler for a while. For the Masters at Augusta National, the reigning champ has set his menu for the famous Tuesday night Champions Dinner, and he won’t be able to escape questions about serving homemade ravioli. That calm temperament—such an asset in competition—will be sorely tested.

Scheffler sometimes takes a few weeks of the season to warm into his best golf. He tends to show momentum during the Florida swing, so it will be interesting to see if his delayed start to the 2025 PGA Tour season—due to puncturing his right hand at Christmas, when a wine glass broke while he was using it to roll fresh ravioli—will postpone the arrival of Scheffler’s major-winning form.

Not likely. Scheffler has become so consistent that it’s hard to bet against him. He won seven times on the PGA Tour in 2024, and the last guy to win seven in one season was Tiger Woods. From 21 total starts in 2024, Scheffler won nine times, was runner-up twice, accumulated 18 top 10s, and didn’t miss a cut.

“When I look back at last year, it was a lot of fun,” Scheffler said in February. “But now it’s in the rearview mirror, and I can’t sit and rest on the accomplishments in the past. Being out here and competing is one of the great joys in my life. It’s so much fun. Winning tournaments is even more fun. Once you get a little taste of it, you just want more.”

The Masters

Augusta National Golf Club
April 10 to 13

A 13-time PGA Tour winner, Scottie Scheffler—Olympic gold medalist and World No. 1—hopes to become only the second golfer to claim the Masters title three times in four years. Eight other players have won at least three Masters, but only Jack Nicklaus took three out of four. Nicklaus won six times total, earning his first three in 1963, 1965, and 1966.

If Scheffler’s putts can drop, he can emulate the Golden Bear. Missed short ones have been his weakness, and although he is sticking with a conventional putting grip on long putts—which remain excellent—Scheffler adopted a claw grip for attempts nearer the hole over the winter.

“I’m always looking for little ways to improve,” he said. “There are some benefits for me with how the new grip works. I have a better feel for the speed on long putts with my old grip, and my touch from long range has always been pretty good, and that is something I wouldn’t want to change.”

The Masters will be the first opportunity of the year for a handful of renegades to return from LIV obscurity, including seven former champs. Spain’s Jon Rahm is among them, having won the 2023 Masters before moving to LIV eight months later. Rahm endured a miserable return to Augusta in 2024, finishing tied for 45th, and now, with a world ranking outside the top 50 (54th at the time of writing), the 30-year-old is hoping to be a more prominent talisman on the famous white leaderboards of Augusta National this year.

Scheffler’s closest challenger in 2024 was completely unexpected: Sweden’s Ludvig Åberg, in his first-ever major start, showed remarkable composure right down to the wire. It was only when Scheffler played the final six holes in three-under-par that he shook off the young pretender. Still only 25, Åberg has already won on the PGA Tour this year, at the Genesis Invitational in February, and by a long par 5, he is the leading player yet to win a major title.