ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 If Bay Hill Club and Lodge is known for anything, it\u2019s firm greens that guys are trying to hit mostly with mid- to long-irons. No wonder Scottie Scheffler, who statistically has enjoyed a three-year reign on the PGA Tour\u2019s strokes-gained-approach ranking, has twice slipped on the red, alpaca sweater as winner of the Arnold Palmer Invitational.<\/p>\n
Scheffler\u2019s secret to success around Arnie\u2019s Place? Perhaps it\u2019s a certain shot that he hits.<\/p>\n
A couple weeks ago, Golf Channel profiled upstart PGA Tour pro Ryan Gerard, an elite ball-striker in his own right, who provided some insight into his obsession with a shot that Scheffler was hitting while the two were paired together last year in Houston. In layman\u2019s terms, when most players try to take speed off shots to hit gaps in their yardages, the ball flight and spin both come down; Scheffler, though, can hit these types of shots without sacrificing either, which makes him especially lethal on firm greens.<\/p>\n
\u201cScottie hits this shot with this smooth knockdown swing, but he launches it higher, spins it more, and it bridges the gap between two full numbers,\u201d Gerard explained. \u201cI\u2019ve kind of been obsessed with this shot since I played with him the final round of Houston last year, and I\u2019ve gone about learning how to hit it. The ball is a little more forward in my stance, I choke down on it and feel like I\u2019m slowing down through the ball and speeding up after. That launches it higher with less speed. I don\u2019t have the extra spin like Scottie, but it\u2019s coming out higher and softer. \u2026 I think it\u2019s going to serve me well at Players, Augusta, PGA, U.S. Open.\u201d<\/p>\n
Can add Bay Hill to that list, too, where Scheffler has unsurprisingly never finished worse than T-15 in five career starts.<\/p>\n
Scheffler was asked about the shot \u2013 let\u2019s call it the Scheffler Gapper \u2013 and though he didn\u2019t reveal any secrets, the question did lead into Scheffler providing a fascinating explanation of his approach to practicing and learning different types of shots.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt like coming out of college I wasn\u2019t a great ball-striker,\u201d Scheffler said. \u201cI felt like I had the potential to be a great ball-striker, but I had some things in my swing I needed to clean up. \u2026 In the offseason between \u201921 and \u201922, I made a really big emphasis on learning, really kind of fine tuning how to hit a lot of different types of shots. That\u2019s always something that\u2019s been fun for me. I get bored sitting on the range and working on my golf swing or working on technique and hitting the same shot over and over again. It\u2019s always fun to create and do different things with the golf ball. That\u2019s one of those things that you can always be practicing. You can always learn how to hit new shots. I\u2019ve always been a guy that, when I got out there, whatever I see is typically what I\u2019m going to try and do. So, sometimes that calls for high shots and sometimes that calls for really low shots with not a lot of spin, just depends on the conditions.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis will be a week in which you\u2019re going to need a lot of different shots, but most of them are going to have to be higher in the air just based on how firm the greens are and how soft the run-up areas are.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scheffler continued later in his press conference, \u201cI\u2019ve never been a guy that\u2019s going to sit on the range and be like, \u2018Today I am practicing a three -quarter, no-spin draw, and that\u2019s what I\u2019m practicing today, like I\u2019m going to dial that in and hit it over and over again. Most of my practice is going out, getting my baseline, making sure I\u2019m hitting the right numbers. And then when I get to that point and I\u2019m comfortable with where I\u2019m at, then it\u2019s into curving the ball both ways, changing the height, changing the spin, changing what I\u2019m trying to do with the ball. I\u2019m doing that on a constant basis, because I don\u2019t want to ever get too far away from where my neutral is.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike if I stood on the range one day and it\u2019s like, \u2018You know what, I\u2019m going to practice hitting a draw with my driver all day.\u2019 My swing is going to change trying to hit a draw for an hour straight. It just will. Just because it\u2019s a different golf swing than me hitting a fade.\u201d<\/p>\n
After Scheffler\u2019s presser, it was easy to go down the rabbit hole \u2013 Do other guys have this shot in their bags? If so, how do they go about hitting it? And if not, how do they go after flags when between clubs?<\/p>\n
Justin Thomas controls distance with his hand setup at address and feel on the backswing.<\/p>\n
\u201cEverybody has probably different ways they do it,\u201d Thomas said. \u201cDepending upon the club, but, you know, sometimes I\u2019ll even feel like my hands are a little bit behind at address, so I feel like I can still make an aggressive pass through the ball, and the ball just comes out a little bit higher for me. Open the club a little more going back. I\u2019m sure a lot of guys have different ticks for them to maybe feel that or think that. But I\u2019m very feel in terms of how far I\u2019m taking the club back to try to get it to go a certain distance that a lot of it is also feel in that sense, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Collin Morikawa bridges his gaps a different way.<\/p>\n
\u201cI control a lot of my distance with curve,\u201d Morikawa said. \u201cSo, instead of like choking down and slowing anything, essentially I\u2019ll speed things up and make it curve more. The problem with that is sometimes you can\u2019t curve it in as much. So, I wouldn\u2019t say I\u2019ve mastered that shot, but I would say a lot of my distance control comes from how much cut and spin I\u2019m putting on the ball. Spin\u2019s key. I\u2019m not someone that hits it that high compared to some guys, like Rory. I just know there\u2019s some pins and some greens that I just can\u2019t go after. I just take my medicine, I try and be really diligent about picking the right spots and numbers and go from there. But I wouldn\u2019t say it\u2019s something that I like have to go and master, just because I know my game. If I start adding in that shot, I don\u2019t really know what my misses are going to be and who knows what\u2019s going to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rory McIlroy has the shot, especially after a ball change.<\/p>\n
\u201cI definitely think it was one of the reasons I went to a softer, spinnier ball was to be able to hit shots like that,\u201d McIlroy said. Really important weeks like this where the greens are really firm, greens at Augusta can get firm, greens at a U.S. Open for example. So to be able to hit a ball that comes down soft but not have to hit it flat out, that\u2019s a skill in and of itself. You can see when Scottie does it he has this sort of high, sort of languid finish when he does it. A little bit like if you look at Tiger back in the day, same sort of thing. So, certainly when the greens get firm, the pins get tucked away, it\u2019s definitely a great shot to have.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ORLANDO, Fla. \u2013 If Bay Hill Club and Lodge is known for anything, it\u2019s firm greens that guys…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":505602,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[71],"tags":[427,99],"class_list":["post-505601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=505601"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/505601\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/505602"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=505601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=505601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=505601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}