Scottie Scheffler’s hand injury continues to be an issue, so he will play it safe and skip The American Express.
Scottie Scheffler announced that he has withdrawn from The American Express due to the injury he sustained on Christmas.
While preparing dinner for his family, Scheffler sustained a puncture wound in the palm of his right hand, per his agent, Blake Smith. Small pieces of broken glass injured his hand, with some of those fragments remaining in place. He consequently had to have surgery to remove those bits of glass.
The original prognosis was that Scheffler would be ready by mid-January and would, therefore, miss only one tournament: The Sentry in Maui.
However, that has proven not to be the case. Scheffler posted the below to his Instagram story on Monday:
“After consulting with my medical team, I have made the decision to withdraw from next week’s American Express tournament to give my injury more time to heal,” Scheffler wrote.
“I am still hopeful to begin my 2025 season at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am.”
Considering the history Scheffler made across the 2024 season, fans and pundits are excited to see if Scheffler can replicate his past success this season. That said, Scheffler won his first of nine events at Bay Hill in March — his putting plagued him in early 2024, but then he made a switch. He changed his putter from a blade to a mallet before the Arnold Palmer Invitational, and the rest was history. Scheffler went on to win at TPC Sawgrass, Augusta National, and Harbour Town over the next six weeks. He tied for second at the Houston Children’s Texas Open during that stretch too. The World No. 1 then added wins at the Memorial, the Travelers, and the Olympics and capped off his season with an emphatic victory at East Lake.
This is not to say that history will repeat itself, but hopefully, Scheffler will return to competitive play at Pebble Beach, where he tied for sixth last year.
If he cannot do so, the alarm bells may begin to ring.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Follow him on X @jack_milko.
