Ryan Lavner believes that Scottie Scheffler could adopt a different approach to his game when he returns to action at the Texas Children’s Houston Open this week.
It has been such an intriguing start to the season for Scheffler. The world number one put the golfing world on notice with his victory at The American Express on his first start of the season.
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He appears to have gone backwards since then, finishing just outside the top 20 at both the Arnold Palmer Invitational and The Players Championship.
Of course, that would not be cause for great concern for any other player. However, Scheffler has set such a high standard, particularly over the last two years.
Scottie Scheffler encouraged to adopt a different approach at the Houston Open
It is difficult not to wonder what is not quite clicking for the 29-year-old, particularly with The Masters just a couple of weeks away.
Speaking on the Golf Channel Podcast, Ryan Lavner suggested that he could see Scheffler attempt to look a lot more like his old self when he gets to Memorial Park this week.
Photo by James Gilbert/Getty Images
“78th in driving accuracy, 139th in proximity to the hole. Again, this is a small-ish sample size at this point in the season. But if you extrapolate that out for the rest of the season, those would be his worst numbers on the PGA Tour since 2021/22, the season that was really the kickstart for his breakout,” he said.
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“He’s going to be playing in Houston this week. Over the past couple of years, Scottie has prioritised accuracy over distance. He does have more distance this year, he does have more speed. I’ll be curious to see if we see him sort of reverting back to what he does well, bread and butter, going at 75, 80 per cent, which again, he said he had actually focused on intently two years ago, in 2024, when he had the nine win season. I’ll be very curious to see if he starts doing that over the next couple of starts.
“Scottie has been good enough to be competitive. He has not been sharp enough to be dominant.”
The statistic that sums up Scheffler’s driving woes
Scheffler was first on the PGA Tour in a lot of categories during the 2025 season. But there is one area that perhaps helps explain why he has stood out considerably less this year.
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No player on the PGA Tour avoided the right rough off the tee more often than Scheffler last year.
He was actually down in 121st for avoiding the left rough. However, it is clearly incredibly powerful when you know that you can almost completely ignore one side of the golf course.
This year has been a different story. He is 94th on the PGA Tour for avoiding the left rough, and 79th for avoiding the right.
Not only is he now missing right with the driver much more often, but there is also no clear pattern to the drives he is hitting.
It must be so much tougher to take on the toughest driving holes on the PGA Tour when you know that you could end up missing on either side of the fairway.
And given that Scheffler barely has any experience of playing that way in recent years, it cannot be at all easy for the four-time major champion to find his way out of this predicament.
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