Scottie Scheffler has enjoyed an excellent season so far on the PGA Tour, clinching his second Green Jacket at the Masters,
while also winning at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and the Players Championship.
And the 28-year-old world No 1 isn’t showing any signs of slowing down on his quest to become one of golf’s all-time greats.
Scheffler is a player who is dedicated to improving at his craft and it seems he’s employing some interesting training plans to help him continue to improve his ball-striking consistency.
While many have raised eyebrows over the American’s unorthodox footwork through his downswing and follow through,
Scheffler is leaving many coaches scratching their heads with his brilliant ball-striking abilities,
that have seen him rise to first on the PGA Tour for strokes gained in the past two years.
But Scheffler still appears to be working on other areas of his swing in a bid to improve consistency.
As many golfers will know, having a good grip on the club is paramount to ensuring a player gets the optimal strike on the golf ball. Your grip is the anchor between your body and the golf club and can often dictate the angle at which your club face makes impact with the ball. If your grip is closed, you’re likely to hook the ball. Too open and you’ll hit a slice.
For golfers like Scheffler, having something as small as your grip out of place can be disastrous when attempting to place an approach shot 10 feet out from the hole.
That is why Scheffler, who has worked with coach Randy Smith throughout his career, is often seen warming up at events on the PGA Tour with a moulded grip.
This is a device that can be placed around a standard golf club’s grip and helps to promote the correct hand and thumb placement on the club.
The training grip, which Scheffler has been seen using at the Open Championship this week, features splayed edges and grooves, which conform to the natural shape of a golfer’s hand but position your fingers and palms into the correct position around the grip.
At the Masters last year, it looked as though Scheffler used a grip that has permanently been attached to a training club too, with the No 1 hitting a few balls with this special training aid before moving on to work on the rest of the clubs in his golf bag.
Golfers can learn a lot from Scheffler just by watching him out on the golf course, too. The American pays such close attention to basic aspects of his golf swing, particularly his grip, and will regularly be seen out on the course looking at his hand placement on the club before he plays a shot.
‘I feel like when my swing gets off, it’s usually something that’s very basic about what I’m doing,’ Scheffler said at the Masters this year.
‘And so I have my grip club because I’m checking my grip.’
Many have tried to dissect why Scheffler’s feet move so much when he swings the club, with some attributing his footwork to the sheer pace he swings through on the golf ball.
‘I don’t really know exactly what it does for my club head speed. I’ve tried to hit a few shots with my irons with what you would like call traditional footwork, and I just felt kind of locked in, felt a little bit too robotic,’ he said at Troon earlier this week, when pressed on why he moves his feet so much.
‘I’ve always been a guy that loved hitting a lot of different shots — changing the height, changing the curve. That’s how I play most of the time. In terms of my footwork, I just felt too kind of locked in and unnatural if I don’t do what my feet normally do.
‘It may look funny to you all, but it feels totally normal to me. I never thought twice about it. I didn’t really think much about it until I got out on Tour, and it really became something that I got asked about.’
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Source: USA Today
