What a statistical deep-dive into Scottie Scheffler's historic season reveals

There certainly is no shortage of ways to describe Scottie Scheffler’s 2024 season on the PGA Tour.

Scheffler amassed eight wins this year—highlighted by his second victories at both the Masters and U.S. Open, a gold medal, and a lucrative win at the Tour Championship. His impressive play this season earned him roughly $29 million in official prize money (not to mention the additional $25 million from the PGA Tour’s bonus pool and the extra paychecks from endorsements). Xander Schaffele’s two-time major championship winning season would've been the best season in recent memory, but was only second-best to Scheffler in 2024.

Since the season-ending Tour Championship, my Instagram feed has been dominated by new posts every day detailing how great his season was. But as a stats guy, I’m less concerned with measuring the success of his season as I am with uncovering how, specifically, he had this phenomenal year.

First, let me backtrack.

Last year, for UCLA’s sports analytics club, Bruins Sports Analytics, I wrote an article detailing how I believed that Scottish Scheffler’s 2023 season (which included two wins) was majorly handicapped by a horrific putting season. For the entire year, Scheffler dominated the Tour from tee-to-green by an astounding margin of 2.615 strokes gained per round. (That’s 10.46 shots gained against the field at any given tournament…) His ball striking was the best we’d seen since prime Tiger. That season, however, Scheffler ranked 162nd in Strokes Gained: Putting on the PGA Tour—only 31 spots from dead last place.

In that article, which I will shamelessly plug right here, I predicted that if Scheffler were to just rank 50th in Strokes Gained: Putting for an entire season whilst maintaining his form tee-to-green, he would amass six wins for the year. As it turned out, his ranking of 69th place on the SG: Putting leaderboard this year was good enough for a seven-win season on Tour (eight counting the Olympics).

But what was it that clicked for Scheffler for him to go from an above-average 2-win season last year to this year’s utterly dominant eight wins? He was incredible from tee to green in 2023; did that trend keep up? Was it an all-around increase in all parts of the game? Or did he just fix his putting? I’ve crunched the numbers, and here’s what I found:

The Data

I first wanted to compare the last two years’ median SG values for Scheffler’s play tee-to-green and putting. I collected the true SG data from Data Golf for over 40 events spanning the last two seasons.

I represented the findings of tee-to-green play in the following graph -- wherein each dot represents a tournament, ordered chronologically, and the dashed horizontal lines represent the median SG: Tee-To-Green (SG: TTG) value for each season.

Interestingly, across more than 20 events per season for the last two seasons, Scheffler’s median SG:TTG only varied by 0.005 strokes between the entire two years! His median SG: TTG was 2.84 in 2023, and it remained fascinatingly constant, rising a mere 0.005 to 2.845 in 2024. Notice how the two median lines look as though they are at the exact same value. Both years, he ranked 1st across the Tour in this category. This level of year-to-year consistency is astounding.

As we’ve seen, there was (impressively) no change in his ball striking across the last two seasons. In order to have experienced a delta of 5 more wins, the gains must have come from his putting. Let’s take a look:

In the putting case, we do see a sizeable (and statistically significant) difference in the median SG value for each year. The median SG: Putting value jumps from -0.13 in 2023 to 0.16 in 2024. This difference of 0.29 translates to an expected 1.16 shot difference per tournament.

While 1.16 shots might not seem like a huge change, keep in mind that Scheffler’s 2-win season included 8 non-victorious top-3 finishes. Essentially, when Scheffler didn’t win, he came very close. And since these margins are so tight, the 1.16 strokes gained per tournament were enough to convert 6 of these top-3 finishes into additional wins (2+6=8).

We’ve now seen that it was strictly Scheffler’s putting that changed and catapulted him to his historic 2024 season. But what actually occurred on the greens for him to make this change? To answer this question, I want to take you through 3 key changes Scheffler made to his putting across the last two years. Then I will walk through how these changes affected his putting performance.

The 3 Key Changes

Key Change #1:

Testing New Putters, Early Jun. 2023 — After a lackluster putting performance at the start of his 2023 season, Scheffler begins toying around with new putters. He experiments with a few different blade and mallet putters. Pictured is Scheffler toying with a wide-bodied Scottie Cameron blade at the 2023 U.S. Open.

Key Change #2:

Technique Switch, Late Sep. 2023 — Before the Ryder Cup, Scheffler works with putting coach Phil Kenyon and makes some major technical adjustments. Scheffler switches to a larger grip, chokes down slightly, bends over more, and raises his hands higher — all in an effort to align his forearms with the putter shaft and lower the toe of the putter. In this video at 0:27, Scheffler explain exactly how these changes helped him better start the ball on line.

Key Change #3

Spider Tour X, Early Mar. 2024 — Scheffler decides on his go-to putter and puts the TaylorMade Spider Tour X in the bag just before the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill. He had previously tested this putter for a very short period of time during the 2023 FedEx Playoffs. The specific 2024 model he uses is a half-inch longer than his previous putter and features an L-Neck hosel and True Path alignment aid with a full-line sight line on top. The putter has 3 degrees of loft and a 72-degree lie angle.

Notably, that week at Bay Hill, Scheffler gained a total of 4.88 shots on the greens and won the tournament by five.

How These Changes Affected Scheffler’s Putting Performance

The establishment of these three key changes create four phases of Scheffler’s putting-improvement arc. For the sake of societal relevance, I will call these Scheffler’s Eras on Tour. The 4 eras are as follows:

Examining Scheffler’s putting performance data for these four periods tells a fascinating story.

The formatting of this graph is the same as the previous two — dots represent tournaments and dashed lines represent median values for a group. Let me take you through the story told by this data.

Era No.1: Baseline, Jan. 2023 - Jun. 2023 — Scheffler experiences mildly below-average putting for these 6 months, limiting himself to only 2 wins despite historic ball striking. After these 6 months of frustration, it’s time for a change.

Median SG: Putting: -0.055

Putting Rank: 107

Win Count: 2

Era No.2: Testing New Putters, Jun. 2023 - Sep. 2023 — Scheffler starts looking for answers. In a state of uncertainty, Scheffler’s putting performance dips to its lowest point across the entire two-year span. Maybe this should be called the “reckoning” period.

Median SG: Putting: -0.43

Putting Rank: 182

Win Count: 0

Era No.3: Post-Technique Change, Sep. 2023 - Mar. 2024 — After extensive technique work with putting coach Phil Kenyon around the Ryder Cup, Scheffler sees marginal gains back from the horrific putter-testing phase. However, he still putts worse than the original baseline period.

Median SG: Putting: -0.175

Putting Rank: 142

Win Count: 0

Era No.4: Using Spider Tour X, Mar. 2024 - Sep. 2024 — Scheffler springs into the limelight, winning his first tournament with this putter in dramatic, five-shot fashion and gaining 4.88 shots on the field strictly from putting.

The next week, Scheffler successfully defends his Players Championship title with another strong putting performance. Over the following 12 weeks, Scheffler goes on to place 2nd at the Houston Open, win The Masters, win the RBC Heritage, place 2nd at the Charles Schwab Challenge, and win the Memorial.

Later in this period, he also will win the Travelers Championship, the Olympic gold medal, and the Tour Championship.

Phew! As Scheffler put it: “I feel like I’ve lived almost a full lifetime in this one year.” And he’s right. This five-month stretch using his Spider Tour X is one of the best runs in all sports — not just golf.

Median SG: Putting: +0.275

Putting Rank: 46

Win Count: 8

Takeaways

There are two main takeaways I want to share about Scheffler’s putting journey over these past two years.

Takeaway #1: Scheffler is going to keep playing dominant golf for a considerable amount of time.

Scheffler demonstrates high-level and unbelievably consistent ball striking. To lead the Tour from tee-to-green by such a large margin is one thing. To do it two years in a row is another. And the cherry on top: if you look back at the first graph in this article, notice how the red dots are more tightly clustered around the median than the black dots; this indicates that his ball striking was less variable this year than last year. Specifically, the 2024 SG:TTG values are 43% more tightly clustered around the group median than they were in 2023. Essentially, his average ball-striking performance was the same both years; in 2024, though, he was 43% more consistent.

Putting-wise, Scheffler is only showing signs that he’s getting better. If you look at the third and final graph in this article, it’s clear that Scheffler has been trending upwards with his putting recently. He also has tons of room left to go. Despite making huge strides, Scheffler still falls around 65 rankings behind the best few putters in the world. If he had become one of the top putters on Tour, I might expect him to plateau; however, given that he’s still somewhat of a mediocre putter, there is definitely room for continued growth.

Takeaway #2: We could all learn something from Scheffler’s putting journey.

However corny it sounds, the progression of Scheffler’s putting is somewhat of a meaningful life lesson that we all could learn from. It’s a tale of persistence. Look back at the third and final graph, and you’ll see the following story unfold:

Scheffler is unhappy with his mediocre performance, so he decides to make a big change (Key Change #1). His performance immediately worsens, but rather than give up, he keeps his head down and explores new avenues (Key Change #2). Although still putting worse than at the start of the journey, Scheffler experiences a small improvement. He keeps searching. Despite having to wait around half a year, the putting finally clicks (Key Change #3), sending his performance soaring past all previous levels. Around a year after deciding to make a change, Scheffler finally reaps the real fruits of his labor, going on to win 8 tournaments in the next five months.