ARNOLD PALMER INVITATIONAL

March 4, 2026

Scottie Scheffler

Bay Hill Club and Lodge

Press Conference

THE MODERATOR: We would like to welcome Scottie Scheffler to the interview room here at the 2026 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard. Making his sixth start at this event, he has two wins and he's never finished worse than T-15. Scottie, a place that you love, if we can talk a little bit about being back at Bay Hill.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, it's definitely a place I always enjoy coming back and playing. Obviously with Mr. Palmer's legacy and the way the golf course is, it's very challenging, and so it's always a fun test I think for us as players. So, yeah, it's good to be back, for sure.

THE MODERATOR: Back at it after your top-10 streak ended. So are you, how is the state of your game? Are you ready to get back on track this week?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah. I mean, I just went home, completely rebuilt it, reinvented the wheel in six days or whatever it was, however long I was home for.

Yeah, no, I got some good rest at home. Had a decent West Coast, obviously would have liked to have a little bit better results, but overall I felt like I did some good stuff. The game still feels like it's in a good spot. I got a little bit of rest at home, and got some good practice in, and felt like I cleaned up what I needed to clean up.

THE MODERATOR: We'll start with questions.

Q. Obviously you've had a lot of great results throughout the course of your career on many different golf courses. But it feels like Muirfield Village, Bay Hill, TPC Sawgrass, Augusta National, you've really excelled and shown maybe an extra gear on some of the more difficult setups. What is it about those courses that accentuates your game the most?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I always enjoy the harder tests that we see. When you think about those golf course, you think about Muirfield, even when it's soft it's really challenging. This golf course, I would say, with the way the rough is now, how firm the greens are, that just gets so challenging. Here in Orlando we typically always get wind. It's very rare to get a stretch here where you don't get a ton of wind. I feel like the standard is usually about 10 to 20 miles an hour, which for golf is a great amount of wind. It's not anything crazy where you're afraid your ball's going to blow or oscillate or anything like that, but it's challenging enough where you really got to hit it extremely solid to get the ball through the wind and control it.

Going into these greens, I mean, Tuesday afternoon, they were already basically dead they're so firm. Shaping up to be I think a very challenging week around the course. They made some changes with some runoff areas and stuff like that. I think overall I like the little, those kind of little things they did to the golf course.

Q. I was chatting with Ryan Gerard a couple weeks ago, and he mentioned that there's a shot that you hit that he's been kind of obsessed with. It's kind of the bridges the gap between two full numbers, and it's kind of a knockdown, but you hit it high and still get a lot of spin on it. Is that a shot that you've always known how to hit, or how did you learn how to hit that, and could you explain it to someone like me who doesn't claim to know much about the golf swing.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: (Laughing). No, I think, when I look kind of back on my career, I felt like coming out of college I wasn't a great ball-striker. I felt like I had the potential to be a great ball-striker, but I had some things in my swing I needed to clean up. So looking '19, '20, '21, my swing really started to improve in that stretch. In the off-season between '21 and '22 I made a really big emphasis on learning, really kind of fine tuning how to hit a lot of different types of shots. That's always something that's been fun for me. I get bored sitting on the range and working on my golf swing, or working on technique and hitting the same shot over and over again. It's always fun to create and do different things with the golf ball. That's one of those things that you can always be practicing. You can always learn how to hit new shots. I've always been a guy that, when I got out there, whatever I see he is typically what I'm going to try and do.

So sometimes that calls for high shots and sometimes that calls for really low shots with not a lot of spin. Just depends on the conditions. This will be a week in which, I mean, you're going to need a lot of different shots, but most of them are going to have to be higher in the air just based on how firm the greens are and how soft the run-up areas are.

Q. The two times that you hosted the Champions Dinner at the Masters did you find the occasion to be at all nerve wracking or maybe even especially the first time? And also, was there anything about those nights that you found surprising, that you didn't know going in, or didn't realize they did at the Masters Champions Dinner?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, I think definitely the first time around when you're hosting the dinner, it's your first time in that room, you don't really know what to expect. I had no idea what it's going to be like. The only thing I really knew is where I was going to sit. That's basically the only thing I knew, sitting next to Mr. Crenshaw and the chairman. So, yeah, I was definitely nervous. I'm not really a super social guy to begin with.

I got there early, checked everything out, kind of snuck Meredith up there, let her see, because she kind of helped me plan out a lot of the food and all that stuff. Obviously I wanted her to see it, so I kind of snuck her up the back, showed her everything before it got started.

Trying to think. If there's anything surprising? I mean, not really. I think it's really cool to be in that room. I think you would always dream of being there. It's always fun for me to get to see some of the champions that I don't get to see on a regular basis. So it's always really fun just kind of catching up with those guys, seeing what they're like, kind of seeing what makes them tick, little stuff like that is always really fun.

Q. Is there any protocol as to where you will sit this year when you are not hosting it?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: There's a little protocol. Guys kind of have like, I would say, sections where they sit. But you move around a little bit. There's not necessarily assigned seats, but I'm definitely not going to go sit in the area where Tiger and Jack sit. Like, there's kind of spots where you kind of feel you'll naturally flow into.

Q. Did you know where to sit in 2024?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah. So Zach and Jordan always sat next to each other. And I definitely didn't ask Jordan to sit by him, because he would have done something to make sure that I didn't have a place to sit (laughing). So I kind of looked at Zach, I was like, Hey, where are you sitting this year? And he told me, and he was nice and let me join him. But I definitely wasn't going to ask Jordan for that because he would have messed with me.

Q. When you talk about creating shots, how long does it typically take you to master a shot or feel comfortable with it and has one shot taken you longer than usual?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Well, so I've never been like really -- earlier somebody asked me a question about a certain shot. I've never been a guy that's going to sit on the range and be like, Today I am practicing a three quarter, no-spin draw, and that's what I'm practicing today. Like I'm going to dial that in and hit it over and over again. Most of my practice is going out, getting my baseline, making sure I'm hitting the right numbers. And then when I get to that point and I'm comfortable with where I'm at, then it's into curving the ball both ways, changing the height, changing the spin, changing what I'm trying to do with the ball. I'm doing that on a constant basis, because I don't want to ever get too far away from where my neutral is.

Q. I'm sorry, where the --

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Like if I stood on the range one day and it's like, You know what, I'm going to practice hitting a draw with my driver all day. My swing is going to change trying to hit a draw for an hour straight. It just will. Just because it's a different golf swing than me hitting a fade.

So if I'm going to practice shots, I'm always doing it doing all different kinds of shots. It's never one specific thing that I'm going out and I'm going to be like, All right, I'm practicing three quarter shots today and that's all I'm hitting.

Q. So you don't want to get away are from your base?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, I always have a baseline and like what I would call like neutral or something like that. But for me it's basically my baseline. It's like if I'm going to hit it pretty straight, then I'll start curving it off of that. But if I get out there and I'm hooking everything, then I'm going to try to hit some fades and try to square it up a little bit.

Q. What's the longest range session you've ever had?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I have no idea.

Q. Can you guess? Just make something up. Make it good.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I don't want to make something up because then -- I mean, I've had some pretty long days. But range session? I don't know, maybe five hours, something like that. I don't know, to be honest with you.

Q. I'll go with five.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Depends how frustrated I get in the middle of it. Sometimes I'll do some two-a-days.

Q. So you are one of four players that have won THE PLAYERS Championship multiple times, and major championships multiple times, along with Rory, Jack and Tiger. What does that mean to you, that accomplishment, and how does that sort of say stuff about your game specifically?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I mean, I think any time you can get mentioned with those guys I think you're doing something right. When you talk about major championships and THE PLAYERS, I think those are the biggest events that we play. Yeah, to have the opportunity to win not only one of those but multiple, it's almost like, you hit a really good shot in there, and you want to hole the putt to kind of validate the good shot. I think sometimes being able to win those tournaments a second time is almost even more validation for the first, that it wasn't a fluke, I really did it.

So I put myself in good positions the last few years and have been able to win some tournaments, and hoping to just do more of that into the future.

Q. You can join Jack with three next week at THE PLAYERS. What would that mean to you?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, like I said, any time you get mentioned with somebody like Jack Nicklaus it means you're doing something right. I'm not going to step into the tournament thinking about winning. I'm going to be stepping on the first tee trying to execute and do what I normally do. But any time you're getting mentioned with Mr. Nicklaus, something good's going on.

Q. Do you ever alter your mental approach say to start a tournament, or do you stick to routine?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, I'm pretty much a routine guy for the most part. I'm routine in basically all aspects of life. So I think getting out of my routine would throw me off a little bit.

Q. Based on the stats this year you wouldn't change anything mentally?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: To be honest with you, I'm not even sure what that means, like what I would do.

Q. Well, I mean a slow start.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: No. No.

Q. On another question about Luke Donald, who is re-upping as European team captain for Ryder Cup, any thoughts on that?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: No, I hadn't seen anything on that. But he's had some pretty good results the last two Cups, and obviously I think we'll be hoping to change that when we go over to Ireland next year. Obviously he's had a lot of success and he's pretty good at it, so if I was the European team I would probably try to be trying to convince him to come back as well.

Q. The slow starts, is there something you can pinpoint there at all?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I mean, last year on TOUR I led the TOUR in first round, second round, third round, and fourth round scoring. So I'm not too concerned over a very small sample size. When you look at the body of work for me this year, I played four tournaments, so that's 16 rounds. And I've always been a guy that's been really good at staying in the present, doing what I need to do in order to go out and play well. And so at 16 rounds I've had 13 that have been really solid and three that haven't been as good. So I'm still batting at a pretty nice percentage. And so if I wanted to dig deep into it I could completely change how I approach tournaments, but I don't think that would be very wise.

Q. Not trying to nitpick, just curious. More meaningful to win events with a guy like Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, you won the Byron, is there any more meaning to that maybe?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I think there's definitely a special aspect to it. When you look at a tournament like this, you think about Mr. Palmer's legacy, not only what he went meant to the game, but all the things he did in his community here and in Pennsylvania as well, and also what they did for the game of golf. So there's always some special meaning with those.

Then you think about the Byron, that one means a ton to me, just growing up in Texas with Mr. Nelson, and that being the tournament that I always dreamed of going out and playing. That one was extremely special for me to be able to win that tournament. That was, I grew up going up there watching those guys, dreaming of being inside those ropes. I had the opportunity to meet Mr. Nelson a few times and, yeah, very special. I don't know how to compare it to like a National Open or something like that. It's different when you grow up in the States just with how many tournaments we have here. But tournaments like that definitely mean a lot to me.

Q. Just one more, please. Brian Rolapp, is there some, what's maybe one thing that maybe stood out about him, first impression, and maybe something, maybe if you could pinpoint something that you would like to see him enhance on the TOUR.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I mean, as far as Mr. Rolapp, I think he's a guy that just kind of gets things done. Like that was my first impression of him. I met him last year at one of the playoff events. We sat down, and it was just, like just getting right into it. He started asking questions and we started talking. It was like no nonsense, like, we got an hour, let's make the most of this hour. I loved it. I loved his demeanor, I thought he was a good guy. Seemed like a really hard worker. So he seems like just kind of like a no BS guy, just get in there, let's get to work and figure this thing out.

You look at a situation like Brooks. That was something that Brooks had a desire to come back to the TOUR, and he's a guy that provides a ton of value for the TOUR and for our fans and sponsors, and a guy that's had a ton of success in the game of golf. And Rolapp's like, Okay, he wants to come back, let's figure out how to do this, and then gets it done in a pretty quick fashion. So seen a lot of great things from him so far and excited about the future.

Q. You mentioned the firmness of this golf course, potentially how difficult it's going to be to access some of these pins. As one of the best iron players in the world how does that change your expectations from a shot-by-shot basis?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I mean, when you look at this golf course, you have to be in the fairway. If you hit it into some bunkers you'll be okay, but if you hit it into start hitting it in the rough you're toast. First and foremost, get the ball in the fairway. And then you got to be fairly conservative going into a lot of these pins, just because how firm it is, just because how thick the rough is around the greens. The winning score here is always pretty, I don't know if you say high or low, but it's not far from par in a typical year. So around here, unless you're playing the par-5s, par's a pretty good score on most holes.

THE MODERATOR: Scottie, thank you for your time as always.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Thank you.