US Edition
Oh, Rory McIlroy, what have you done?
A few weeks ago, the world No 2 suggested that world No 1 Scottie Scheffler switch to a mallet putter to fix his woeful form on the greens – and the American duly made the change before last week’s Arnold Palmer Invitational.
And there Scheffler was at on Sunday, waving his new wand on his way to obliterating the field at Bay Hill and now, with his weakness apparently corrected and just four weeks until The Masters, there is the distinct whiff of the unstoppable about his challenge for a second green jacket in three years. All thanks to McIlroy…
Actually, that is unfair and untrue. Scheffler’s putting coach, the affable Lancastrian Phil Kenyon, intimated to Telegraph Sport on Monday that his student was preparing to swap out his blade anyway and that the timing of McIlroy’s plea was merely a coincidence.
In fact, this is not the first time that Scheffler has gone to the heavier version, as he first put it in the bag in 2022. But he soon went back to the traditional model and has largely been baffling everyone since.
The mallet is much more forgiving and if Scheffler’s peerless long game has needed anything over the last 12 months it is forgiveness. It has been akin to Manchester City playing with a Sunday League striker. Chance after chance created … sitter after sitter missed. There have been two Scottie Schefflers – the genius of the tee and the fairway. And the hacker on the greens.
Since he prevailed at The Players Championship last March – he is defending his title at Sawgrass this week – Scheffler, 27, had racked up a dozen top fives and pulled so far clear in the tee-to-green stats that the rest have been on a different hole. He has led the way with the driver and, of course, with his scintillating approach play.
The reverse has been fact at the business end. He has been outside the top 150 in the putting stats, below the also-rans and down among the barely-rans. It would be tempting to invoke the old cliche, “drive for show, putt for dough” but because of Scheffler’s ball-striking magnificence, he earned more than $10 million in that barren run and established himself at the head of the rankings.
However, it has hurt and nowhere was this more evident than at the Ryder Cup in Italy when he was in tears at a record-breaking 9&7 defeat. A lesser person would have snapped their putter over their knees. Scheffler, a man of deep faith, kept the conviction, employed Kenyon in the autumn and has seemingly at last located the answer.
As Kenyon pointed out in our brief discussion it has not been an overnight transformation. It is a process that Scheffler is still undergoing and his rivals – even the ones generous with their advice such as McIlroy – must be praying he does not continue making such strides on the greens. Or it could be curtains and golf could be witnessing an era of dominance unseen since the Tiger days.
McIlroy was brave enough to acknowledge the potential. “Being as consistent as Scottie has been is really, really difficult in this game,” he said. “Anyone can pop up and win an event here or there or get on a good run, but the consistent performances that Scottie’s been putting in week-in and week-out every time he tees it up, it is incredible.
“We all knew that he had this in him. His ball striking is, honestly, on another level compared to everyone else right now. We knew if he started to hole putts, then this sort of stuff would happen.”
With all the controversy surrounding LIV Golf and the mooted merger with the PGA Tour, it has been all too easy to overlook the Scheffler feats – especially because there has been an absence of silverware.
“Scottie’s remarkable play on the golf course has sort of taken a backseat to everything else that’s been happening off it, which is a shame,” McIlroy said. “So, yeah, I’d say if we were in a different place in the world of golf, his golf would probably be getting a lot more applause.”
Scheffler is not bothered. He does not crave the spotlight – anything but – and, as ever, is remaining understated. “It’s just been a case of keeping the mind as quiet as possible,” he said. “Part of the problem is just trying too hard. It’s frustrating to not have the best of myself, just because I know that I can putt really well. It’s not like I’ve been a bad putter my whole career. I’ve just gone through a stretch where it’s been tough.”
And with a few statements with which average golfers around the world will sympathise, Scheffler underlined the maddening aspect of that part of the game that is divorced from every other.
“Putting is such a difficult thing because you can’t force it,” he said. “Like, I can hit a really good 9-iron from the middle of the fairway and every now and then I’ll get gusted, and it won’t turn out well, but worst case it’s not going to be very far from the hole. But putting, I could hit a really good putt from 15 feet and if it lips out, it’s the same thing as me just hitting a terrible putt a foot short and then tapping it in. It’s tough.”
But it is also golf. And at this very moment, Scheffler appears to have its number.
Scottie Scheffler has worked out how to putt and the rest of golf should be terrified
World No 1 has been working with Phil Kenyon and, after a change in style of putter to go with tee-to-green brilliance, looks unstoppable