Christmas dinner injury forces golf’s World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler to miss PGA Tour season opener
By Thomas Schlachter, CNN
(CNN) — While Christmas Day is the most wonderful time of the year for many, Scottie Scheffler will remember his 2024 festivities for different reasons.
To cap off a roller coaster year for the men’s golf World No. 1, Scheffler suffered an injury while preparing his Christmas dinner and will now miss the start of the PGA Tour’s 2025 season.
“On Christmas Day while preparing dinner, Scottie sustained a puncture wound to the palm of his right hand from a broken glass,” Scheffler’s manager Blake Smith said via the PGA Tour on Friday. “Small glass fragments remained in the palm which required surgery.”
Smith added that Scheffler has been told he “should be back to 100% in three to four weeks”.
But following surgery, the 28-year-old will miss The Sentry tournament, the PGA Tour season-opener in Hawaii.
This news is just the latest in a hectic calendar year for Scheffler – on and off the golf course.
On the links, Scheffler has been on a streak that most golfers can only dream of. In April, he won the Masters before going on to win gold at this year’s Olympic Games in Paris. In total, Scheffler won seven events on the PGA Tour in 2024, including the TOUR Championship.
Scheffler also won the Hero World Challenge and helped lead Team USA to its tenth straight win at the Presidents Cup.
It was an equally memorable year off the course for the Olympic Gold medalist. Scheffler and his wife Meredith welcomed their first child on May 8 this year, just over a week before Scheffler played in the PGA Championship.
It was during that tournament that Scheffler was arrested, charged with felony assault and released from jail before shooting a stellar 5-under par on day two of the event. All charges against the golfer were later dismissed.
Scheffler will be hard-pressed to ever have a more eventful year than he had in 2024, and his 2025 season will now be getting off to a much quieter start after his injury.
Scheffler expects to return to competition in mid-January at The American Express tournament at La Quinta, California, according to Smith.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2024 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
