You know you are good when you can sit inside the top 20 after the first round of a PGA Tour tournament and seem unsatisfied. But such is the case for World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler.
Scheffler shot a 2-under 70 during the first day of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill Club & Lounge. He is seven shots off the lead, tied for 17th, as Daniel Berger set a blistering pace on Thursday with a 9-under 63.
Afterward, he put Thursday's round into perspective.
“I felt like I made a couple mistakes that I shouldn't have, but overall I did some really good stuff out there,” said Scheffler post-round.
“Anything under par on this golf course is a decent score.”
The Ridgewood, NJ native has dominated professional golf for the last couple of years. Despite that, golfers are always tweaking, trying to maximize everything, which led to his driver change at the Arnold Palmer this week. Scheffler used the Qi10 for the last couple of years. But on Thursday, he put a new TaylorMade Qi4D driver in his bag.
“I feel like what we have seen is more consistent spin numbers. So that will help it be a little bit more accurate off the tee,” Scheffler said after his round.
“Directionally, I struggled a little bit with it at the start of the year, but I got to what I thought was a really good spot last week, and I liked what I saw today.”
As of this writing, the four-time major winner has picked up 0.75 strokes on the field off the tee, per Data Golf. That ranks 16th in a field of 72 golfers.
Scheffler began his 2026 season with a bang, winning the American Express in January. He then logged T3 and T4 finishes at the Phoenix Open and Pebble Beach, respectively. In his last outing, Scheffler snapped his insane streak of 18 consecutive top-10 finishes at Tiger Woods' Genesis Invitational.
It was the longest such streak since 1983 on the PGA Tour. He finished tied for 12th.
Even though there is a lot of ground to make up, you can count on Scheffler being in the mix on Sunday.
