The index finger of his left hand extended over the grip with his back to the hole and the right hand in a claw shape pointing at the target. In this manner, with the putter, Scottie Scheffler has presented himself at the Hero World Challenge, the first tournament the World Number One has played since he finished his season on the PGA Tour and shortly after competed in the Presidents Cup. It is the change, the big change he has made in the pre-season with the help of Phil Kenyon, his coach on the greens. “Everything is fine with him, we know what we’re doing, the work is going in the right direction,” he said on Wednesday to reporters without offering much detail. His grip until this week in competition had been the most traditional. What hasn’t changed is the putter.
Obviously, Scheffler is not the first player nor the last to make a change in his putting grip, but it is striking that someone who has dominated world golf in an imperial manner in recent months and has won eight tournaments in 2024, including the Masters Tournament, the Olympic Games, the THE PLAYERS, and four designated events, would do so. Anyone in their right mind might think: but what is the creature going to change and why.
That’s how great champions are and how they work. They are never completely satisfied. If there is room for improvement, they go for it. It is no secret that the weakest point of Scheffler’s game was the putt, and he has set out to find solutions with Kenyon. For now, they have opted for this claw grip, whose great peculiarity is that extended index finger on the outer side of the grip. We’ll see how long it lasts, although Scottie doesn’t seem like one of those players who doesn’t give changes time.
For now, it hasn’t worked wonders for him today. His putting strokes gained statistic has shown a small negative balance in his favour. He has lost just over half a hundredth of a stroke compared to the tournament average. In reality, he finished in the middle of the table. He was the tenth best on the greens out of twenty participants. Considering that there have been quite a few tournaments where he finished at the bottom in this area, not too bad.
Specifically, Scheffler, who returned with a given ball on the 1st, spectacularly, made his best putt on the 18th hole, just to finish. He holed a birdie putt of almost four metres. Beyond that, a birdie putt of about two metres on the 6th and another of the same distance for par on the 9th hole stand out. This putt was very important, as it allowed him to avoid his second consecutive bogey. Not only did he make it, but he did so with great determination. There is a detail very much in his favour. It is true that he did not make any long putts and had several at a distance of six to seven metres, but it is also true that he did not miss any short ones, beyond a birdie putt of just over three metres, a putt that cannot be considered short.
“It’s something we already considered with Phil last year, but we preferred to leave it until the season was over. It’s a good time to try and train new things. You always want to be better. From four and a half metres down I feel it’s very beneficial for me, but being further away I’m more comfortable with the conventional grip, as I’ve always felt very good with the strength, I consider myself very good in that chapter,” he explained after the round.
Let’s remember that last year Scheffler finished the year in 77th place on the PGA Tour in the putting strokes gained statistic. He gained 95 hundredths over the average. From a statistical point of view, it doesn’t seem like there’s much improvement at the moment, but the sensations are another thing, and the reality is that he has shown a lot of security in short putts. In any case, he has only just begun, and there will be time to draw more conclusions.
Meanwhile, the Number One continues with his own. Without a great day of putting behind him, he signed a card of five under par (67 strokes) and placed third in the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas. Some things never change.
