Scottie Scheffler was crowned the 2023 PGA Tour Player of the Year after one of the best ball-striking seasons on record - but it's clear that it was the putter that needed work.
Scheffler admits that his putting prevented him from adding to his two wins in a season where he was almost always in contention - with his 13 top-five finishes being the most in a single campaign since 2005.
The 27-year-old dominated all the main PGA Tour stats in terms of Strokes Gained from tee to green, but in putting Scheffler ranked way down in 162nd last season.
With such an exhibition of golf up until the greens, who knows how many trophies, including Majors, Scheffler would have won with even an average putting season - so the World No.1 is unsurprisingly keen to improve with the flat stick this season.
"At the end of each season I kind of sit back and look at things that I want to improve on. Last year my ball striking was obviously very good and my putting wasn't as good as I think it needed to be," Scheffler said ahead of the season-opening Sentry in Hawaii.
"So when I look back at the season, that was one of the things that I kind of tried to focus on in the off-season.
"I usually have one aspect that I try to put a little bit of extra emphasis on...this year kind of the emphasis was placed on putting.
"I put in a lot of work with Phil [Kenyon, his putting coach] over the off-season and I'm excited. I saw a little bit of the fruits of that at the Hero.
"I had a nice putting week and I feel like the ball's coming off my blade really nice right now and I'm looking forward to coming out this week and seeing where I'm at."
Highlights from an award-winning season.The top shots of 2022-23 from Player of the Year Scottie Scheffler. pic.twitter.com/k1wRDM0jh0January 3, 2024
Scheffler also had an interesting take on his putting - saying that his ball-striking excellence meant he was hitting more greens in regulation leading to more birdie putts from distance.
With those being harder to hole, seeing fewer putts drop early in rounds meant that playing better tee-to-green may have actually hurt his overall putting.
"Golf's a funny game," added Scheffler, who has a new Olson putter in the bag. "You can hit a lot of good shots and a lot of good putts and sometimes it's just not your week.
"Then the margins get so small. The shot here or there at the beginning of the week is the deference between you holding the trophy at the end of the week and coming in second.
"If you look at the top 10 players in the world, consistently they're always the best ball strikers. Ball striking week-to-week keeps you at the top of the leaderboard, and it's the guy that happens to hole the putts.
"So, when you see guys, especially like if you look at my year last year, when you see me on TV a lot putting from 10 to 15 feet, I can't control where that putt is.
"If you hit 6-iron into the green, you can't always control where that putt is. If you're hitting a greenside bunker shot or chip you know where the kind of putt you want to have is going to be from, so that's an element you can control.
"Sometimes, when you don't see the putts going in, it's not always easy to gain momentum when you're putting from 10 to 15 feet.
"Sometimes it's nice to get a few putts at the beginning of the round from maybe four to eight feet where you just see the ball go in the hole. Sometimes that can help momentum.
"Golf's a funny game. There's a lot of different stuff that goes into a round of golf."
