Phil Kenyon is widely recognised as the leading putting coach in professional golf, currently working with World No.1 Scottie Scheffler, Major winners Justin Rose and Matt Fitzpatrick, reigning FedEx Cup champion Tommy Fleetwood and a host of other PGA Tour and DP World Tour winners.
He lifted the lid on his work with the world’s best players in a recent appearance on Upgame Talks.
He joined forces with Scheffler in September 2023, and there was an immediate uptick in the American’s performance on the greens. In the two-and-a-half years since they’ve been together, Scheffler has won 14 tournaments, including three Major championships.
“The first thing you could see was a hugely talented player with a massive drive and motivation to do well, extremely competitive,” Kenyon says.
“I think that was probably what was holding him back to a certain degree with his putting. I think he got himself into a little bit of a pickle.
“It’s not been overly complex. He’s an amazingly gifted player. You’re trying to literally shift out the rubbish and let him do his thing.
"Most of the stuff that we will do will be around set-up, which I think fits in with a lot of the simplicity of how he’s approached his full swing.
"And then also just to allow him to get really engaged in his target, he’s a very creative golfer that plays out of his body. You know, he’s very external. Just by keeping it simple, it’s allowed him to be athletic, and just give him some confidence in his ability to read greens.
"The one thing that I noticed immediately was how good a green-reader he was just by using his intuition. And I think he’d got sort of out of kilter with a couple of things around his green reading, potentially.”
Another part of the puzzle was Scheffler switching to a TaylorMade Spider X mallet putter: “It’s interesting that when we started working we tested a whole range of putters to see if the putter made any difference to his stroke and the little patterns, and it didn’t.
"Whatever putter we tested made no difference. But I think where the Spider came in was, at that time, he was using the line on the ball and we wanted to get rid of the line to allow him to free up and get more into his target rather than being line locked using the line.
"The Spider was the one that he could aim really well without using the line, so that was the reason that putter went into the bag. The ditching of the line really helped him from a mental perspective, and helped some of the things he was working on in his pre-shot routine.
"He definitely started putting better around that time and then confidence grew.”
Aside from Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, who Kenyon also worked with a number of years ago, Matt Fitzpatrick is the form player in world golf right now, having risen to number three off the back of three wins in his past 10 starts worldwide.
Kenyon revealed an amazing story about how Fitzpatrick’s attention to detail enabled them to pinpoint and improve a specific weakness in his putting.
“He’s been well known about in terms of how he uses stats, and he would collate all the different putt types he’s hitting. So it’d be uphill, left-to-right, downhill, right-to-left, whatever it is, he’d collate that," he says.
"A couple of years back we found he was missing a lot of left-to-right putts low, a really high percentage of putts that he missed were always low. So we just had a very simple strategy that we put in, a little intervention. Let it roll, and lo and behold, he’s missing less.
“Sometimes little things like that can get lost in the bigger data, and when you can dive in a little bit more specifically you can start to then maybe tailor things slightly.
"Even if it’s just down to spending more time in practice on those putts can help a player, or do you need to dive into something more specific, so they have a bit of a strategy to help them.”
Kenyon has worked with multiple Ryder Cup players – usually Europeans – but last year’s match at Bethpage Black was a little bit different because he had three players on each team.
“The Ryder Cups historically have been the highlights of my career to attend and be part of the support staff. They’re brilliant. I think they’re some of the best sporting events you could ever be part of. But I didn’t enjoy it (last year), if I’m honest," he says.
"It was difficult with three players on each side. You don’t do an awful lot of work, you’re there really as a cheerleader or if something goes wrong. The guys don’t have a lot of time to practice.
“Previously when I’ve been to Ryder Cups, because most of the time I’ve been with Europeans, you get really behind the whole European thing, and obviously I found that quite difficult.
"Even though I’m European, I wanted the Europeans to win, but I found it really difficult at the last one, with having players on both sides.
"I tried to be as detached as possible, and if I’m honest, it kind of takes your enjoyment away from the week. But I’m there to do a job, and I just tried to focus on that and be as professional as I could be.”
Phil Kenyon was speaking on the Upgame Talks show with Kit Alexander.
He also offered fantastic insight and opinion on the other players he works with, what makes a great putter, how amateurs can improve, working at The Masters, and much more. Watch the full conversation on YouTube below, or listen on Spotify.
