Scottie Scheffler hopes to solve putting struggles at US Open

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Scottie Scheffler took one long, smooth stroke, then looked down the line and watched the ball roll toward the hole on the practice green.

He was using his wedge.

That was a drill. The state of his game on the greens — more of an emergency.

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Scottie Scheffler of the United States lines up a putt on the second green during the first round of the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday at Muirfield Village Golf Club on June 01, 2023 in Dublin, Ohio.  (Andy Lyons/Getty Images)

The player listed No. 1 in the latest world golf ranking is sitting at No. 148 in the PGA Tour in putting this year. With the U.S. Open starting Thursday, Scheffler finds himself experimenting with different putters and also trying to give himself a little more credit for putts he hits well that just don't go in.

There have been a lot of them lately.

"If I hit a really good 6-iron, sometimes it’s going to go to 2 feet and sometimes it’s going to go to 15 feet, and it's like, ‘well, ... it doesn’t make a huge difference,'" said Scheffler, who is trying to become the only No. 1 to win the U.S. Open other than Tiger Woods, who last accomplished that in 2008. "But if I have a 6-footer and I hit a really good putt and one time it goes in and one time it doesn't, everyone is like ‘Oh, why did he miss that putt?’"

But missing those putts comes at a price. Analytics, to say nothing of leaderboards, spell it out.

Scheffler leads the PGA Tour in scoring average and strokes gained on approach shots. Numbers from one analytics guru showed that through May, he was the only player to gain 15 or more strokes from tee to