Scottie Scheffler to Miss Start of 2025 PGA Tour Season After Christmas Day Accident

Scottie Scheffler (L) and Rory McIlroy of the PGA Tour look on during The Showdown: McIlroy and Scheffler v DeChambeau and Koepka at Shadow Creek Golf Course in Las Vegas, Nev., on Dec. 17, 2024. Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images for The Showdown

Scottie Scheffler, the reigning PGA Tour Player of the Year, will miss the start of the 2025 PGA Tour season after suffering a freak accident on Christmas Day. The tour’s communications department released a statement on social media, via Scheffler’s manager, Blake Smith, in which it said Scheffler cut his hand, which necessitated surgery.

“On Christmas Day while preparing dinner, Scottie sustained a puncture wound to the palm of his right hand from a broken glass,” the statement read. “Small glass fragments remained in the palm which required surgery. He has been told that he should be back to 100 percent in three to four weeks. Unfortunately, he will have to withdraw from The Sentry. His next scheduled tournament is The American Express.”

The Sentry, also known as the Tournament of Champions, is the annual season-opening event for the PGA Tour. It’s a limited-field tournament that is only open to golfers who won a PGA Tour event the prior year, in addition to qualifiers for the Tour Championship. Scheffler achieved both criteria as he led the tour with seven victories in 2024, and not only qualified for the Tour Championship but won it for his first FedEx Cup championship. Scheffler has yet to win the Sentry over his three prior starts at the tournament, with last year’s fifth-place result being his best finish.

The 2025 Sentry is scheduled to kick off the 2025 PGA Tour season on Thursday, Jan. 2, before concluding on Sunday, Jan. 5. The second tournament of the season is the Sony Open, which, like the Sentry, is held in Hawaii, but as the statement said, Scheffler isn’t scheduled to return to play until the PGA Tour’s third event. That is the American Express, which will begin on Jan. 19 from La Quinta Country Club in Southern California.

Per the three-to-four-week timeline given, there’s no guarantee that Scheffler will be cleared to compete at that event as it begins three weeks and one day after the day of the injury. The American Express is part of the PGA Tour’s West Coast swing, as the following two events also take place in California, with the Farmers Insurance Open, which begins on Jan. 23, and the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, which begins on Jan. 30.

Scheffler is coming off a historic 2024 PGA Tour season, which included his second major championship, courtesy of winning the Masters. He won seven times on tour but nine times total, thanks to winning a gold medal at the 2024 Summer Olympics, and also winning the Hero World Challenge earlier this month, with both of those being unofficial events on the PGA Tour. He became the first player since Tiger Woods (2007) to win seven times on tour in a single season, while his nine total victories tied Woods (2000) and Vijay Singh (2004) for the most in a season since 1950.

For his efforts, Scheffler was named the tour’s Player of the Year for the third straight season, joining Woods (11 wins) and Rory McIlroy (three wins) as the only golfers with at least three Player of the Year awards. Scheffler was also the PGA Tour’s money list winner for the third straight year, as he accumulated $62 million in on-course earnings, when bonuses are taken into account. He was the top-ranked golfer in the world every single week of 2024, becoming the first player since Woods in 2009 to pull off that feat.

Scheffler’s 2024 season was not without controversy, however, as at the PGA Championship he was arrested and charged with a felony and three misdemeanors. The arrest occurred just prior to his second round, and Scheffler was charged with assault of a police officer and detained for not complying with police instruction. He was briefly held in jail but was released in time to tee off and complete the tournament, in which he finished in seventh place. The charges against Scheffler were dropped 12 days after the arrest.

A 13-time winner on tour, Scheffler has two major wins under his belt, as he won green jackets in both 2022 and 2024. Despite just being 28 years old, and joining the PGA Tour full-time in 2020, Scheffler has already racked up nearly $72 million in PGA Tour earnings, which ranks fifth in tour history.

Despite Scheffler’s absence, the Sentry will still have a stacked field, with some of the biggest names in golf, who aren’t a part of LIV Golf. Eight of the top 10 golfers, per the Official World Golf Ranking, have qualified for the event, including McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, and Hideki Matsuyama. They each had two victories last season, so their total, combined, still falls short of Scheffler’s seven wins.

Chris Kirk is the defending Sentry champion, while two-time winner Justin Thomas (2017, 2020) is the only multi-time Sentry winner to qualify.