It only takes a cursory glance at any statistics website to realize Scottie Scheffler’s ball-striking prowess (and more importantly consistency) is a step ahead of anyone in the game and it has been this way for the better part of three years now. Players such as Rory McIlroy, Xander Schauffele, and Bryson DeChambeau are clearly incredibly impressive, but the stats don’t lie, Scheffler is a level above all of them from tee to green.
Scheffler possesses a somewhat idiosyncratic golf swing and footwork that always draws attention on broadcasts and social media, but coupled with his obvious exceptional talent, I believe that the diligence with which he approaches the fundamentals of setup has a huge influence on the remarkable consistency of his otherwise unorthodox method, and he has said as much himself.
Over the past few seasons, I have become fascinated by his generational levels of consistency, and have consumed as much Scheffler content as humanly possible which has led me to the conclusion that simplicity, basic fundamentals, and repetition are what Scheffler prioritizes above all else, and nowhere is that more evident than in his grip.
If you ever get the chance to look in Scheffler’s golf bag during any range session, be it warm-up or practice, you will without fail see two 7 irons in his bag, and attached to one of those 7-irons will be a molded rubber training grip that he begins EVERY session with. He simply refuses to undertake a single practice session or warm-up without using it. In fact, this club is so important to the world number one, that at the 2024 USPGA Championship, it was the very first club he plucked from of the bag for his extremely limited warm-up after being released from jail! If that doesn’t tell you how important it is to him, I don’t know what will?
I would advise anyone to carefully watch Scheffler the next time they see him on the TV coverage, and observe just how meticulous he is when he places his hands on the grip of the club when taking his address. It is genuinely remarkable and highlights to me that he prioritizes this element of pre-swing more than any of his peers that I have seen at least, and when the person prioritizing something others aren’t is the best… well that suggests to me there is something to it!
The golf grip is literally our only point of contact with the club, and with a degree of open or closing of the clubface being huge in golf, having consistency in that area is absolutely imperative in my (and Scottie’s) opinion.
As a long-time PGA Professional, I would absolutely implore you to get hold of one of these grips this Black Friday weekend, take it to your local Pro Shop have it installed on something similar to Scheffler like a 7-iron, and begin to implement it consistently within all of your warm-ups and practice sessions. With so many things that can and do go wrong within the golf swing, eliminating a variable such as the grip is both easy to do and will reap huge rewards in terms of consistency.
If you can just implement five or ten minutes of work with the training grip at the beginning of every practice session or warm-up, you will begin to significantly improve the consistency of your hand placement and as such your clubface control. You can even use this grip to improve from the comfort of your own living room by simply gripping and re-gripping while watching TV. Just reinforcing your hands' memory of where they should sit on the grip can have potentially huge knock-on effects for your golf game.
This Black Friday weekend, I've seen some brilliant deals out there on this style of training grip, and I genuinely believe if you are serious about improving your golf game, this is a must-buy. If it so crucial to the world number one, then surely we can learn from that?
