GENESIS SCOTTISH OPEN

July 9, 2025

Scottie Scheffler

The Renaissance Club

Press Conference

BRIONY CARLYON: Delighted to welcome world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler to the Media Centre here at the Genesis Scottish Open.

You've briefly just said that it's been a warm welcome for you coming back to Scotland this week. Just give us a sense of last day or two of preparations here and what you're looking forward to this week.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, it's good to be back in Scotland. I love this style of golf. It's good to be back here playing and it's pretty hot where I live, so I'm enjoying the cooler weather for a bit.

Q. What's the main things that you're going to gain this week, and what's the percentage between winning here and prep for next week?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, there's definitely a certain aspect of getting preparation for next week but definitely am not looking at next week.

This is an important tournament for me, and this is a tournament I want to play well in. And if I wanted to just do preparation, I would have gone and played some other golf courses for fun. There's other ways to get prep than coming over and playing tournament golf. It was important for me to get over here.

Like I said, tournament golf is a little bit different than just playing for fun. Being here in the right conditions and in the wind and getting used to the time and stuff like that. But by no means am I showing up at this tournament to prepare for this week. It's a tournament that's important for me and a tournament I'd like to play well in.

Q. You were on the course yesterday with your wife and son just having fun. How important is that, as well?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: This is a fun week for us. We get to stay very close to the course. So it's nice for them to be able to walk out and hang out with me for a couple holes. That's something we very rarely get to do.

Yesterday there were no fans, so it was nice to relax and have Meredith come and hang for a couple holes. At tournament weeks, you don't get a bunch of time at home so it's nice for them to come out and hang out a little bit.

Q. Your relationship with Bob goes back to the Walker Cup. How pleased to see him winning here and also being paired with him for the first couple round?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Definitely excited for the week. Got a good pairing to start the first couple days, and both guys played well in the tournament last year.

Bob got a tough break two years ago with Rory birdieing the last two holes in pretty challenging conditions to beat him by one and for him to bounce back and win last year was nice for me to see, and I was happy for him. He's a guy that works really had hard, and he's one of the great guys out here. So it was nice to see him get it done at his home tournament.

Q. What do you have to do to adjust your game to links? Because it's different from what you regularly play on the PGA TOUR.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I don't know if adjusting my game would be the way to describe it. You just hit more shots and shots than I typically practise. You use a little bit more of the tools that I have over here. You get to play a lot of different shots, high, low, and that's something that I've always enjoyed, being able to work the ball and hit different types of shots.

Like I said, it's fun for me to come over here and use those tools.

Q. What are your ideal conditions for this week for prep next week? Would you rather rain, wind?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I think it's pretty standard you don't know what's going to happen with the weather over here. Not really something I think about too much. Just play with whatever we get.

Q. When is the last time you feel like you mastered a shot you didn't previously have?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: That I mastered a shot? I'm not really one of the guys that will sit there on the range and practise one certain type of shot, even around the greens, you know what I mean.

I can't really think of an instance where I spent a lot of time hitting only one shot. I like to figure out where my neutral is and make sure I can hit it straight, and from there, I can usually figure out how to hit it both ways, high, low. If I'm able to hit my standard shots well, then I'm typically able to hit the other shots well.

Q. Do you run across, or does it happen often, a shot you've never been faced with before, based on a lie?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I think a lot of it has to do with the lie. Over here it's a different type of grass than I grew up on, and a lot of times over here, you don't really know if you're going to have a good lie or a bad lie.

Sometimes you get a clean one and other times you get a ball that's essentially in hay and very tough to play out of. We practise throughout the week to get ready for the tournament. So it's not very often we hit or attempt to hit a shot that I haven't practised.

Q. Lastly, do you think luck plays a fortune in winning, and what would be your definition of that if that's the case?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I think any time you win out here, there's some sort of bounce or some break that you get that could go one way or another. In these tournaments, it can be funny sometimes in links golf with the way the bunkering is.

Sometimes if you barely hit it off line it can kind of bounce in the fairway and kind of hop and go into one of those bunkers and some days, you're just hitting it way off line and it ends up barely right in the bunker and so you have a clean lie. There's little stuff like that that happens throughout tournament week but that's just part of it.

You've just got to go out there -- there's in bunkers in the middle of the fairway. So hit the ball there most of the time. But most of the time there's no bunkers in the middle of the fairway. Just try to get the ball in play.

Q. Can you talk about how important or otherwise it is in terms of being an international golfer, the fact that is joint sanctioned with the PGA TOUR and DP World Tour? But obviously you had your win at the Olympics in Paris and you come over here as the world No. 1, how important that global aspect of your career?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I haven't really played too much golf internationally. I always come over here and try to play this tournament and The Open Championship. I haven't played in Asia or Australia yet as a professional.

Really, with the way our schedule is on Tour, the thing that's most important to me is my time at home. It would be wonderful to be able to play an international schedule, but right now we play most of our tournaments in the States and I come over here for these few weeks.

The off-season for us is typically where guys will go play in Asia and Australia or start the year in Dubai. For me, it's important to get time at home because that's my priority and playing tournaments that I can.

Q. This is a tournament that seems to be getting bigger every year, and I wonder, putting aside next week, for the international players, is there more -- Scotland, the Home of Golf, the fans are very knowledgeable. Is that an extra edge for the international players here?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I'm confused what the question is.

Q. In terms of being Scotland, that being the Home of Golf, is there extra edge to winning the tournament in terms of the prestige or winning here?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, I think any time you're able to win a tournament on the PGA TOUR or DP World Tour, I think you've done something very special. It's very challenging to win out here. It would be very special to win at the Home of Golf, and like you said, it's a different style of golf that we play throughout the year.

So to be able to win a tournament on this golf course, or next week, says a lot about a player, especially if they are coming over from the States. Like I said, you have to hit a lot of different shots and do things that we don't normally do with golf in the States. I think it's really fun. It brings a new level of play to what we normally do.

Q. What's your schedule going to look like after The Open Championship?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: Yeah, go home shortly after and get ready, I'll have two weeks off before we start the Playoffs, and do Memphis, to Maryland and then to hopefully Atlanta and finish out the year.

Q. How does your attitude towards links golf compare now to when you first came over to Scotland a few years ago, and how much closer are you to getting the job done around a course like this??

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I think my attitude has always been the same. It's a lot of fun for me to be able to come over and play these courses.

Like I said it's a different style of golf and it's really fun for me because you get to be more creative. A lot of times you're forced into being more creative, especially when you get a lot of wind around these courses and you have to play a lot more shots than you normally would and that's just based off the conditions. When you're playing links without much wind, there's a little bit of creativity, but you play a lot of what I would call standard shots.

But when you get 15, 20-mile-an-hour wind coming off the water, you have to change the way you do things, especially when you're dealing with elevation changes like you do on this golf course.

Q. When was your first experience of links golf?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I think it was here. Maybe four or five years ago.

Q. What was your first Open?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: St George's. My first time playing over here it was cancelled -- I don't know if it was cancelled in 2020, is that right so 2021 would have been my first time over here. So we played this tournament and went over to play St. George's.

Q. Any memories of first impressions? Anything? Just make something up to entertain us. No pressure.

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I think one of the things that surprises us is the way turf is over here. I played in a lot of wind growing up at home. You grow up in Texas, you play in wind all the time, but the wind affects the ball differently because of the turf. This turf is a little bit spinier than the turf at home.

That was one thing that surprised me the first time I came over was certain shots that I would play at home that would work in that much wind. I kind of had to adjust a little bit to take a little bit more spin off the ball, to take more club, take more spin off, just because of the way turf is here, the ball actually comes off a little bit spinier than it does off the bermudagrass we play at home.

Q. Based on the high bar you've set last few years, how would you describe the season so far? Slow start with the injury, etc. How would you assess where you are at the midpoint in the calendar year?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I feel pretty good. I've had some nice starts this year. I think in golf you can always feel like you can do a little bit better no matter how you're playing. It's just one of those sports that you always feel like you can perfect it but you never really can get that close.

So there's always stuff to be working on and there's always stuff that I can improve on but that's part of what makes golf great is it it's an endless pursuit.

Q. You're halfway to the Grand Slam. Of the two still to win, is there one that you feel you have a better chance than the other, U.S. Open style or links?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I don't think so. I like both style of golfs. I love getting beat up at the U.S. Open. That's a fun battle between us and the golf course. And coming over here, like I said, you get to do a lot of stuff I wouldn't normally do.

Around the greens here, for example, when we're in the States, if we're practicing short game around the green, playing a practise round, I probably will use two clubs. I'll use a 60-degree and a 56. Here, I'm bringing like five or six clubs, sometimes all the way down to an 8-iron.

To me, it's a much more traditional style of golf where you can tell that the game is invented over here. Because if you come out with an older gentleman who is maybe a 10 handicap and can't hit the ball very high, I can still play these golf courses because you can run the ball on the ground.

No matter where you are, there's always a shot to be played. In the States we have to deal with a lot of grain and stuff like that around the greens and some heavier rough. When you look at -- let's compare the U.S. Open to the The Open Championship, two totally different types of challenges.

When you miss a green at the U.S. Open, you're basically going to hit a similar type of shot each time where you're just opening the face with a 60 and trying to play like a bunker shot to get the ball close to the hole, extremely difficult for anybody. It's something that I would say nobody has really perfected how to do it.

You get over here and I miss a green, and I'm going to go over there, assess the lie. Sometimes I may get a really clean lie and sometimes I may get a thick lie, and with a thick lie I'll have to do a more traditional open face with a 60, play like a bunker shot.

Again, a clean lie, and I may be using an 8-iron to pitch up the slope or maybe a 50-degree depending how much pitch there is in the slope. Over here, there's just more options, and it's just a little bit of a different test than some of the tests we see at home.

Q. Did Ted help you much when you first came over here? Did you play with him at all on other links courses?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I played with Ted over here once. We played Turnberry last year before The Open. I would say I lean on Ted pretty heavily week-to-week. When we are out figuring out stuff on the golf course, most of the stuff we do, we're figuring out stuff in the practise round.

It's a pretty good discussion between us on what we're going to do. A lot of times I'll tell him what I'm thinking and he'll tell me what he's thinking during the practise round, and we have an idea of what we like to do from certain areas and just to get prepared for the tournament. I would say no matter where we are, we are doing a lot of preparation together.

Q. Have you gotten to any of the other links courses over the years, like North Berwick or Gullane?

SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER: I wanted to but when you're here for the week for a tournament, there's simply not much time. We travel over here, get in on Monday -- I was actually Justin and I were going to go try to play North Berwick on Monday because I had not played it before.

But travelling through the night, your body doesn't feel like it does normally does after a two- or three-hour plane flight. I know it's going to be tough putting my son to bed because if it's going to be tough for me to go to bed it's going to be pretty tough for a one-year-old to go to bed. Didn't get the chance.

I've only played this golf course around here. Teddy has played North Berwick a bunch of times and Muirfield.

With the stage of life I'm in, that's why I talk a little bit about international golf, I don't get the pleasure of travelling with my family week-to-week. So when I get time off between tournaments, more golf is something I'd like to do, but it's not my priority.

My family is my priority, and you know, there will be hopefully times later in my career where I have hopefully some free time. But if my wife and son are here, I want to spend time with them instead.