Scottie Scheffler was just trying to make homemade ravioli with his wife over Christmas.
That wholesome holiday activity, however, resulted in him needing surgery and missing nearly a full month of the PGA Tour season.
The top-ranked golfer in the world is back this week and ready to make his season debut at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am. He said on Tuesday that he and his wife, Meredith, were simply cooking pasta on Christmas when a wine glass broke directly into his hand as he was trying to roll out the pasta.
“We were at a rental house, so we didn’t have the right tools,” he said. “The only thing there was a wine glass that we found. I had my hand on top of it, and it broke … the stem kind of got me in the hand.”
He said it took maybe 15 minutes or so to get the bleeding to stop. Once he returned home, Scheffler had to undergo a procedure to get pieces of the glass out of his hand, and he’s been recovering ever since. He was going to make his debut at the American Express earlier this month, but he opted to wait until this week’s event at Pebble Beach instead.
While the incident was admittedly a dumb one, Scheffler was just happy that it wasn’t more damaging.
“It could’ve been a lot worse,” he said. “I actually talked to somebody who did the exact same thing and the stem went straight through their hand. So, it’s one of those deals where immediately after it happened I was mad at myself because I was like, gosh, that’s so stupid.”
Scheffler had a career year on Tour last season, where he picked up his third straight player of the year award. He didn’t miss a single cut in his 19 starts, and he finished outside the top 10 just once in his 13 starts before the U.S. Open in June. Scheffler won seven times, including both at the Masters and at The Players Championship. He also won the Tour Championship to end the season, which gave him the FedEx Cup.
He made nearly $30 million on Tour, which set a record, before claiming another $34 million in bonuses last year alone.
“I think he made enough money to hire a chef,” Rory McIlroy joked earlier on Tuesday. “It’s like, ‘Why are you cooking for yourself?’”
Normally, Scheffler said, he’s covered on that front.
“Her name is Meredith, she’s pretty cute,” he said in response to McIlroy’s barb.
