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Scottie Scheffler dominates the field to win Arnold Palmer Invitational. Next up: The Players

Garry Smits, Jacksonville Florida Times-Union
·3 min read
Scottie Scheffler, hitting his tee shot at the seventh hole of the Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando on Sunday, dominated the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational and will try to defend at The Players Championship beginning on March 14 at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass.
Scottie Scheffler, hitting his tee shot at the seventh hole of the Bay Hill Club and Lodge in Orlando on Sunday, dominated the final round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational and will try to defend at The Players Championship beginning on March 14 at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass.

Scottie Scheffler dominated the final round of the 2023 Players Championship to win by five shots.

He dominated the final round on Sunday in the Arnold Palmer Invitational, winning by five shots.

The last person to have that kind of momentum entering The Players was a guy named Tiger Woods.

Scheffler fired a bogey-free 66 at the Bay Hill Club and Lodge to win the API at 15-under-par 273, the lowest score for a winner since Rory McIlroy in 2018 and the largest margin of victory in the tournament since Woods won by the same margin in 2012.

What's next for Scottie Scheffler? How about a repeat Players title?

Scheffler will now try to become the first back-to-back winner of The Players in its 50-year history at the Players Stadium Course at TPC Sawgrass, beginning with the first round on March 14. Only two have won at Bay Hill and The Players in successive weeks, Tom Kite in 1989 and Woods in 2001.

Scheffler shot 10-under with no bogeys over his last 24 holes and beat the final-round scoring average (73.155) by more than seven shots.

It's no surprise he led the field in Strokes Gained off the tee and tee-to-green. Scheffler has been on a ball-striking roll over the last three seasons, during which he's won seven times and finished among the top 10 in 61.1 percent of his starts (33 of 54).

How did Scottie Scheffler putt at Bay Hill?

But Scheffler may have finally healed his only Achilles Heel: putting. He led the field at Bay Hill in Strokes Gained putting in the final round (picking up 3.892 against the rest of the players) and was 4.347 for the week -- his best performance since his first PGA Tour victory at the 2022 WM Phoenix Open.

Last year, Scheffler was 162nd on the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained putting. He was 136th in one-putt green percentage. And he was abysmal on putts between 4-8 feet, making only 63.4 percent, 185th on the Tour.

Scheffler came to the Palmer Invitational with a new putter, the Taylor Made Spider Tour X, a mallet-head putter. According to pgatour.com, it was the fifth putter he's tried as a PGA Tour player. The previous models were blade putters.

More Scottie Scheffler tidbits entering The Players

  • He's won the most of any player since the start of the 2021-22 season. McIlroy and Jon Rahm won five.

  • Scheffler is the first player to enter The Players Championship as the FedEx Cup points leader.

  • He's the first defending champion to enter The Players as No. 1 in the world since McIlroy in 20202 (the tournament was canceled after one round due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic).

  • Scheffler has 48 top-10 finishes, 35 top-fives and 24 top-three since joining the Tour in 2019-20, the most of any player in all three categories during that span.

This article originally appeared on Florida Times-Union: Scottie Scheffler wins Palmer Invitational to gain momentum for Players