Scottie Scheffler’s first drive on Championship Sunday went out of bounds. Eager to defend his TOUR Championship title, the world #1 tried hard to recover from that mistake. But the rough start derailed any chance of him competing at East Lake. He continued to struggle throughout the day, even scoring a shocking double bogey on the 15th hole. Still, Scheffler was trailing Tommy Fleetwood only by a few strokes and proved to be a constant threat to the FedEx Cup title. However, it seems that he still wasn’t satisfied with his performance.

In the post-tournament presser, Scheffler was asked to compare his performance from 2024 to what he achieved this year. He clearly looked displeased with where the conversation was heading when the question was being asked. Scottie told the media, “Yeah, I think after a year like ’24, I think sometimes people’s expectations and stuff of me can change. For me, nothing really changes.” Scheffler certainly raised the bar after his 9 triumphs in 2024. While he remains as hungry as ever to try and win every event, fans did start expecting more from him this season.

In fact, many also started drawing parallels between him and Tiger Woods. Even his rival from LIV Golf, Bryson DeChambeau, confessed that Scheffler is the first player since the big cat to be so clinical with his irons and wedges. However, as the world #1 has said it himself many times, he is not at the same level as Woods and he knows it. But that doesn’t mean that Scheffler is not going to push himself hard enough to reach the same legendary status sometime in the future.

Speaking about how he felt his year went, he said, “I’m not satisfied with where I’m at. I’m always trying to get a little bit better. I think that’s just part of the game. I think that’s what I love about golf is you’re always trying to get a little bit better.”

If you call winning two majors in a year instead of one an improvement, then Scheffler has certainly been “a little bit better.” Yet, he would have hoped that he could defend the TOUR Championship title. Especially after Brandel Chamblee had challenged him to become the first player since Tiger Woods in 2007 to bank the lowest score at East Lake after going in as the FedEx Cup leader. Another elite list he would have joined was to become the third player, after Woods, Phil Mickelson, and Rory McIlroy, to win multiple TOUR Championship titles.

However, certain elements about his game in 2025 have left Scheffler satisfied. “I feel like this year I improved my putting from last year, and that was really the one area of the game that I’ve been working quite hard on. Phil and I have been doing a lot of stuff, and it’s nice to get some good results from that. Yeah, that’s the reason I was able to win some more tournaments this year.”

As Scottie Scheffler confessed, he has been working hard with his putting coach, Phil Kenyon, to improve his game on the green. And stats confirm that his putting has shockingly improved from the 9-win season in 2024. Last year, Scheffler had 0.095 strokes gained off putting, which was the 77th best on the Tour. In 2025, the average has drastically gone up to 0.380. That clearly shows that he has been far more lethal on the green, especially because he used to lose strokes from putting two years ago.

For most, 5 titles in a season would be a dream achievement. Then why was Scottie Scheffler so critical of himself? Ignoring his aspirations to win and competitive nature, the reason behind his negative assessment of himself might lie in something that he experienced on the course on Sunday.

Why was Scottie Scheffler not satisfied with his performance after the TOUR Championship loss?

We already spoke about the disappointing double bogey Scottie Scheffler scored on the 15th hole. However, it was not just the fact that he went 2-over par on the hole that left him frustrated about his performance. It is how he approached the hole that really got on his nerves. To begin with, he missed his tee shot that landed just at the edge of the green and bounced into the water. Taking a penalty from it, he played his third shot beautifully, which landed just 11 feet away from the cup. However, to everyone’s surprise, Scheffler missed the simple 11-footer and ended up with a double bogey that pushed him way out of contention.

And that is not the only bad strokeplay he displayed throughout the day. When it comes to his stats specifically in the fourth round, we can see that Scheffler was struggling with accuracy. He only found the fairway 8 out of the 14 times, ranking at T21 in driving accuracy. The 18-time PGA Tour champion lost 1.351 strokes off the tee because of that. He found the greens in regulation 61.11% of the time, which was the 22nd best for the round. He was also terrible at scrambling and sand saves, ranking above 18 on the field in both stats. With such a bad performance on paper, no wonder Scottie Scheffler couldn’t retain his TOUR Championship, despite getting so close to the top of the table.