Scottie Scheffler felt frustrated sitting at home for two tournaments he normally plays while recovering from glass puncturing the palm of his right hand while making ravioli.
A big part of him was thankful the injury wasn’t worse.
World No.1 Scheffler will make his season debut at this week’s AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, the second $US20 million PGA Tour signature event.
Scheffler played Cypress Point on Monday and Pebble Beach on Tuesday, without a bandage and swinging as freely as ever.
As for the fateful dinner?
Scheffler said he and his family wanted to make ravioli from scratch, so they rolled the dough but were in a rental house and didn’t have the right tools to cut the pasta. He found a wine glass, and that’s when the trouble began.
“I had my hand on top and it broke,” he said. “I’ve heard nothing but horror stories since this happened about wine glasses, so be careful. … It broke and the stem kind of got me in the hand.
“It could have been a lot worse,” he said. “I actually talked to somebody who did the exact same thing and the stem went straight through their hand.”
It was one of the few mistakes Scheffler made all year.
Rory McIlroy, in his 18th full season as a pro, said Scheffler stood out in 2024 beyond his seven PGA Tour titles, his second green jacket and the Olympic gold medal.
“I’ve never — this is anyone, this is Tiger, this is in the history of golf — I don’t think I’ve ever seen a golfer play as many bogey-free rounds as Scottie,” McIlroy said. “He just doesn’t make mistakes. He plays the right shot at the right time over and over and over again.”
McIlroy had another reaction when asked what he thought when heard of Scheffler suffering the injury. He jokingly replied, “I think he made enough money to hire a chef. It’s like, ‘Why are cooking yourself?'”
“I’ve got a chef. Her name’s Meredith,” Scheffler said with a laugh, referring to his wife. “She’s pretty cute.”
Scheffler had a tiny, clear bandage over the spot where he had surgery to remove the shards of glass – upper palm, right below the middle finger.
He had to miss The Sentry at Kapalua in Hawaii, a tournament he enjoys because it allows him to shake off any holiday season rust.
He missed The American Express in the California desert, another tournament he enjoys playing because it has good weather and gives him an indicator of his game.
He watched more golf than usual, including a package of video of his wins that let him observe what he was thinking and feeling at the time. He also watched the tournaments he was missing.
“It was definitely still frustrating watching golf on TV and not being able to play,” he said.
Scheffler didn’t decide until Friday to enter Pebble Beach. He said he made an effort to hit a lot of golf balls early last week.
“Tried to work out some of that soreness and the scar tissue and stuff that goes in there after surgery,” he said. “So I tried to push myself pretty hard in the cold last week and it continued to get better and better each day.”
The hard part is matching what he did last season, the most anyone had won on the PGA Tour since Tiger Woods won seven times in 2007.
“It’s a little weird making it this late in the year,” he said. “But yeah, good to be back.”
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