When the sun came up on Sunday morning, golf fans awaited a final round at Bay Hill that seemed destined for excitement. Scottie Scheffler and Shane Lowry shared the lead through 54 holes, followed closely by a highly talented group of top players like Wyndham Clark and Will Zalatoris. Instead of the expected dramatic finish, golf fans were treated to a clinical, dominant performance from Scottie Scheffler, reminding everyone why he’s the top-ranked player in the world.

Scottie Scheffler’s five-shot win at the Arnold Palmer Invitational marks his first victory since the 2023 Players Championship, aside from winning the small-field Hero World Challenge. Between that 2023 Players and Scheffler’s win at Bay Hill yesterday, Scottie has played in 20 PGA Tour events. He finished in the top 10 in 16 of those starts, despite losing strokes on the greens in 13 of those tournaments. Scottie’s ball-striking is unrivaled. As noted by Sean Martin, Scheffler has led the tour in Greens in Regulation Percentage in each of the past three seasons. His ball-striking statistics are downright silly. 

Scottie Scheffler’s ball-striking is so strong that you could make the case for him as the best golfer in the world, even with a faulty putter that occasionally leaves him terrified when standing over a five-footer.

What if Scottie could putt, though? That’s been the question on many minds over the past 12-18 months. On Sunday we got a glimpse into what that hypothetical looks like in reality. Scheffler led the field in Strokes Gained: Putting in the final round, gaining 3.9 strokes on the field. Per usual, the ball-striking and magical touch around the greens showed up too. Scottie closed with a bogey-free six-under-par 66, the lowest round of the day by two shots. He gained more than seven strokes on the field on Sunday.

Scottie Scheffler with an above-average putter is unquestionably the best player in the world. Nobody should argue with that. The question is whether or not we should expect Scottie to putt well moving forward. The case for believing Scheffler’s putting woes are behind him is that this weekend’s spike in putting performance coincides with a putter change. Scottie added a mallet to the bag starting at Bay Hill, and it paid immediate dividends. We’ve seen plenty of other players (Adam Scott, Will Zalatoris, Lucas Glover, etc.) improve their putting performance over a sustained period following a putter change. Throwing the mallet in the bag could be just what Scheffler needed. The case against believing in sustainable improvement for Scottie is that putting is highly volatile. One hot weekend on the greens could easily be a flash in the pan. Overreacting to a small sample size is a dangerous game, even if Scheffler’s putting stroke looked better.

But it’s hard to imagine the putter change could hurt Scottie. He can’t putt much worse than he was putting prior to the change, yet he still found himself near the top of the leaderboard week in and week out.

Heading into the Players and then major championship season, Scheffler reasserted that he is the guy to beat. I like his chances of winning a major over any other player in the world without hesitation.

This piece originally appeared in the Fried Egg Golf newsletter. Subscribe for free and receive golf news and insight every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.