Scottie Scheffler is coming off a generational season where he has amassed an incredible 7 wins, including a green jacket and an Olympic Gold medal. He has been consistently at the top of just about every long-game statistic you could possibly name for the past two years now leading many people to speculate as to the reasons behind his dominant ball striking.
Personally, I would start with his generational talent and work ethic, but I would also include his fastidious attention to detail when it comes to how he places his hands on the grip of his clubs. Next time you are watching him play golf, take a look at how carefully he takes his grip and how often he looks and re-checks the positioning of his hands on the golf club, I find it fascinating…
Scheffler realizes that as his only point of contact with the golf club, the accuracy with which he applies his hands on the grip has an enormous effect on his ability to control the clubface, and how many of you could say the same? As a PGA Professional, and based on my experiences in hundreds of Pro-Am competitions over the years, I would say not many. In these events I rarely see any of my amateur partners giving any kind of consideration to their grip at all, let alone checking and re-checking it prior to every shot like Scottie Scheffler. Whereas I see many of them repeatedly rehearsing elaborate swing feels and techniques, very much a case of running before they can walk in my opinion.
One thing that Scheffler does in practice to ensure consistency with this incredibly important fundamental is refusing to undertake any practice session or warm-up without using his molded rubber training grip. This training grip is specifically contoured to guide your hands into a neutral position on the club without having to think too hard about it, and with enough repetition will provide your hands with the muscle memory to find this position themselves. Scheffler finds this training aid so vital to his preparations that it was the very first club he pulled out of the bag for his extremely hurried warm-up after his chaotic release from jail at the 2024 USPGA Championship.
Scheffler has his training grip fitted to a TaylorMade P7-TW 7 iron built in the exact specifications of his gamer set so he can actually hit golf balls using the grip, which not only gives a great sense of how you should place your hands on at address, but will also increase awareness of hand positioning throughout the golf swing. This would be my preferred method of using the grip, but you could also fit it to any shaft and then cut that shaft just below the grip, and keep this shortened ‘club’ inside, maybe next to the TV remote and whenever possible just repeatedly put your hands on the grip to continually reaffirm the correct feel and positions.
As I said, there is no doubt that his success is down to significantly more than this $10 training grip, but I genuinely believe that it has a huge influence on his frankly incredible consistency. Scheffler obviously thinks so too, because he hasn’t had a single practice session without it for well over three years now…
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