Even after he had climbed to the top of the world rankings, there were some doubts about Scheffler’s game.<\/p>\n
The statistics proved he was the best from tee to green. They also proved he was among the worst with the putter.<\/p>\n
In late 2023, a call was made to English putting guru Phil Kenyon – whose client list is a who’s who of major champions – in a bid to improve with the flatstick.<\/p>\n
Attention was particularly paid to Scheffler’s reading of the greens and increasing the stability of his grip.<\/p>\n
Switching to a claw grip – where the right hand acts as a pincer lower down the shaft – has transformed Scheffler into one of the most reliable putters in the game.<\/p>\n
The tweak helped him become the first player to defend the PGA Tour’s Players Championship, win a second Masters, Olympic gold and five other titles in a stellar 2024 that also had echoed Woods.<\/p>\n
Leading the putting statistics after three rounds at Portrush, having holed 97% of his putts inside five feet and 90% of those within 10 feet, put him in command. He holed putts of 14, 15 and 16 feet on Sunday.<\/p>\n
“[The grip] was something we tested out last year and felt comfortable from the start,” Scheffler said.<\/p>\n
“I use it as we get closer to the hole, lag putting. Outside of 15 to 20 feet, I’m still putting conventional.<\/p>\n
“It was something we felt could help us improve, and so far it has.”<\/p>\n
While improved putting has taken Scheffler to Woods-esque heights, will it help him move closer to replicating his iconic predecessor’s achievements over the longer term? That remains to be seen over the coming years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even after he had climbed to the top of the world rankings, there were some doubts about Scheffler’s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9630,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[566],"tags":[64,63,755,85],"class_list":["post-9629","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9629","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9629"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9629\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9629"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9629"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9629"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}