CROMWELL, Connecticut – It’s generally acknowledged that it’s plenty difficult to follow a really low round with another.
And what about a record-setting season? Travelers Championship defending champion Scottie Scheffler has been dealing with that dilemma this year after his Tigeresque 2024.
A year ago, Scheffler notched eight PGA Tour victories, including the Masters, Players Championship and Tour Championship, plus the Olympic gold medal and FedExCup, on the way to becoming a runaway Player of the Year and No. 1 in the Official World Golf Rankings. Then there was being arrested after a traffic incident before the second round of the PGA Championship at Valhalla Golf Club in Louisville, Ky. He was released from jail in time to return to the course and shoot 66, eventually finishing in a tie for eighth. He was the first player since Tiger Woods in 2007 to record a seven-win season, and his total on-course earnings for the season were a staggering $62 million.
“At the end of the year, I was very grateful, very thankful,” Scheffler said via Zoom from his home in Dallas, Texas, during the Travelers Championship Media Day on Tuesday May 29. “I had some pretty significant life experiences between Bennett being born (on May 8) and then all the golf tournaments as well. It was a lot of fun, but I didn’t feel any pressure to repeat this year. I was just hoping to continue that trend on the golf course.
“Life’s been good here at home. Bennett’s doing great. He’s healthy. He’s been doing well, and he’s been a lot of fun for (wife Meredith) and me.”
Unfortunately for Scheffler, he couldn’t make his usual preparations for this season, missing the first few weeks due to injuring his right hand when he tried using a wine glass to roll pasta for ravioli while making Christmas dinner. He underwent surgery to remove shards of glass from his palm and was unable to practice golf during the recovery. He made his 2025 debut as the two-time defending champion at The Players Championship and tied for 20th. Two weeks later, Scheffler finished second in the Houston Open, one stroke behind Min Woo Lee, and then was fourth in defense of his Masters title and eighth in the RBC Heritage.
“The beginning of this year was strange in the sense that I couldn’t necessarily lean as much on the preparation because I had taken essentially a month off of golf due to kind of a silly injury,” Scheffler said. “So did I put more pressure on myself? Not really. I think my expectations at times were even lower because I hadn’t been able to practice the way I normally would. My ballstriking wasn’t as sharp as it was last yer and the year before that. So I kind of continue to work on my swing and get back to the basics of what I do well and continue to work on those good habits.
“I’ve had some good finishes recently and been close to the lead in some events, so I feel like I’m definitely trending in the right direction.”
Scheffler, 28, a native of Ridgewood, N.J., is playing in this week’s CJ CUP Byron Nelson at TPC Craig Ranch in McKinney, Texas, and then will zero in on the year’s next two majors, the PGA Championship and U.S. Open, before defending in the Travelers Championship on June 19-22 at TPC River Highlands.
Connecticut’s biggest sporting event had special meaning to Scheffler because he turned 28 on the third round, and it was his first PGA Tour victory since son Bennett was born on May 8. Ironically, he parred the first playoff hole to defeat close friend Tom Kim, whom he had pizza with earlier in the week, after climate protesters stormed the final green of regulation, disrupting and delaying the finish.
“When I think about the Travelers tournament in general, I think of how fun it is, how fun the week is for me and for my family,” Scheffler said. “It’s a week in which the players and our families and our caddies get treated as good as we do all year. If you ask any caddie on Tour what’s his favorite event, it’s probably going to be the Travelers Championship. I just think the tournament as a whole does such a good job of making the week so easy and fun for us and the whole family. We always get a great crowd, and it’s always a fun event to play.
“The city and the town of Cromwell really kind of rallies around the tournament, and it’s really fun for us to get to play in front of such great crowds. When I think about last year’s tournament, I had a really great week playing. I hit the shots when I needed to. I think on Saturday, I was starting to kind of fall out of the tournament, but I birdied the last four holes to kind of get myself into the last group. That was important to me at the time. Then I was able to play really good on Sunday and get myself into that playoff with Tom, one of my good buddies. We share a birthday, so it was fun getting to compete with him down the stretch, and it was definitely even more fun to get the win and not have him have that over my head.”
Coming off the usually tortuous U.S. Open, the Travelers event is “a relaxing week” for most of the best golfers in the world. In 2024, it helped Scheffler get to 13 career PGA Tour victories among 18 overall pro titles and finish No. 1 on money list for the third consecutive year while amassing nearly $72 million in purse earnings alone in five years on the PGA Tour. The 2019 Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year and 2020 PGA Tour Rookie of the Year has been No. 1 for 100 weeks and is much more than just a golfer.
Scheffler was raised Catholic, and his sponsor for his confirmation was Rocky Hambric, founder of Hambric Sports, a sports management agency. Scheffler’s mother stated “Scottie really thinks of Rocky as his godfather,” and he has been a client of Hambric Sports since he turned professional. Scheffler’s agent at Hambric is Blake Smith, son of Scheffler’s swing coach Randy Smith.
As of 2022, Scheffler is a member of Park Cities Presbyterian Church, and through the church, he and his wife also became supporters of Behind Every Door, a Christian non-profit organization that provides support to low-income areas in Dallas. Meredith is a director at Behind Every Door, and Scottie attends Bible study with Scott, who caddied for three-time Travelers Championship winner Bubba Watson for 15 years. When requesting Scott to be his caddie, Scheffler said, “I really want to work with a Christian. That’s how I try to live my life.”
Scheffler and close friend Sam Burns co-host an annual retreat with members of the College Golf Fellowship, a faith-based ministry. He appeared in the sports documentary series Full Swing, which premiered on Netflix in February 2023, and made a cameo appearance in the 2025 film Happy Gilmore 2, a sequel to Happy Gilmore. In August 2023, Scheffler became an investor in the Texas Ranchers, a pickleball team, and later that year, he competed in an exhibition match with former tennis player John Isner and pickleball players Anna Leigh Waters and Ben Johns.
Andy Bessette, executive vice president and chief administrative officer at Travelers, sent Scheffler a special gift as he does for every defending champion. Aware of his love of fine coffee, Bessette sent an elaborate roaster with a bag of high-end Kona coffee beans from Hawaii.
“This is pretty intense, Andy,” Scheffler said, lifting the large contraption from its box. “It’s going to be a fun activity for me in one of my off weeks is getting in here and trying to figure it out.”
“We do a lot of things to make sure we’re part of their family and they’re part of ours,” Bessette said. “Scottie can focus, he can turn on his focus and get honed in so quickly. Tiger did it, Rory (McIlroy) does it, there are a handful that do it. But watching Scottie and the way that he gets into it, when he’s feeling it, that’s the most impressive thing about him. They always called it in my day, ‘The Zone.’ He goes into The Zone.”
As one of the PGA Tour’s eight Signature Events, The Travelers, which raised a record $2.1 million for local charities in 2024, will again have a star-studded field. Golfers used to have to play in nearly all Signature Events, but that is no longer the case, so Bessette and tournament director Nathan Grube, partners for 19 years, still work to get marquee players here. They already have the top six in the world: Scheffler, Masters champion McIlroy, 2022 Travelers champion Xander Schauffele, Collin Morikawa, Justin Thomas and Ludwig Aberg, along with No. 9 Viktor Hovland, No. 15 and 2023 U.S. Open titlist Wyndham Clark and No. 19 and 2023 Travelers champion Keegan Bradley of Vermont.
www.travelerschampionship.com.
