The Swing\u2019s The Thing<\/em>.<\/p>\nThe 50th Players Championship on the PGA Tour begins tomorrow at Ponte Vedra, Florida. It is contested at the PGA Tour\u2019s own TPC at Sawgrass (Stadium Course). Scottie Scheffler, the #1 player in the world for the past 70 some weeks, and the winner of the Arnold Palmer Championship last week in Orlando, Florida, is the defending champion this week. Whenever a pro dominates the PGA Tour for an extended period of time, as Scheffler has been doing with his seven wins in the past barely more than two years, which included The Masters, the TV commentators get cranked up by analyzing why that player is better than everyone else.<\/p>\n
Scheffler has been even better in statistics over this period of time than his number of wins indicates. He is a very good putter most of the time. Yet last year, he actually putted poorly, having trouble with the short stick so much of the time. But not last week. He changed putters and posted one of the most amazing putting stats I\u2019ve ever heard of\u2013he never missed a putt inside fifteen feet on about his last 25 holes of the tournament. That is incredible! And when you look at his superior iron play almost every week, it look to me like the rest of these guys are playing for second this week.<\/p>\n
And the pundits are talking about why Rory McIlroy, a five-time major champion who drives the ball very long and better than anybody, hasn\u2019t won another major since 2014. Okay, I\u2019m now going to join the club of pundits and throw in my two cents about why that is compared to Scheffler.<\/p>\n
The two greatest golf ball strikers of all time were the great Ben Hogan of Fort Worth, Texas, and the eccentric Moe Norman of Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. There wasn\u2019t any question about it, and there still shouldn\u2019t be even considering the game\u2019s best ever since, even Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods. I knew both Hogan and Norman. I played with Hogan twice on the PGA Tour. And I watched both of them many times hit golf balls in practicing.<\/p>\n
Both Hogan and Norman did something in their golf swing that was so unique and actually difficult to do. The swung the club so that from the point of contact of the ball and well into their follow through, they restricted the club head from passing their hands. In golf swing parlance, it is called \u201cnot releasing the club head.\u201d In the case of Hogan, I always thought of it has \u201ca manufactured swing.\u201d At least when Hogan was young, he had extreme wrist cock in his backswing which helped much to give him club head speed and thus length off the tee. He needed to do this because he was only five feet, eight inches tall. Then 0n his downswing, Hogan would delay the release of his wrist cock until very late, which also gave him more length with his driver. And then he had a massive release late on the downswing until he ideally made contact with the ball with his hands neither ahead or behind the ball at impact. And what he did in the next several feet of his upswing was amazing. He did not allow the club head to release much. Norman did this even more than Hogan did because Norman didn\u2019t have much wrist cock in his backswing, which made it easier for him to have very little wrist cock on his follow. Norman could do this because he was strong physically in his hands. The result of this type of swing is that, depending how upright or flat the person\u2019s swing is, the club head makes a very wide arc in the upswing. This type of swing is what can produce great accuracy in shotmaking.<\/p>\n
That is what Scottie Scheffler does. He has very little release of the club head on his upswing. Since Scheffler is tall and has an upright swing, the arc of his club head on his upswing is very wide, resulting in his club head swinging very high above an imaginary horizontal plane on top of his head. I think this is the main reason Scheffler is often #1 on the PGA Tour with his iron play.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, Rory McIlroy is more like Dustin Johnson, who has a lot of release of the club head on his follow through. Thus, the club head of both Johnson and McIlroy has a short arc on their follow, Johnson more than McIlroy. That produces more distance with the driver, and when those guys are \u201con their game,\u201d they can be unbeatable. However, much of the time their iron play will not be that accurate. And that is what Rory has been fighting for time. Lately, he has been the #1 driver on the Tour, and lengthy as well, but he\u2019s been about 150th in his iron play as well as his putting. I think Rory would become more consistent if he would try to restrict his release on his upswing even though it likely would shorten his drives a little.<\/p>\n
And what about their footwork. That has always been important to me in the golf swing. I think Ben Hogan, Peter Thompson, and Tom Nieporte had the best footwork I have ever seen on the PGA Tour. But Scottie Scheffler\u2013WOW! I call it \u201cthe Scottie Shuffle.\u201d As soon as he hits the ball, he quickly drags his right foot back and forward more than a foot! And his left foot rolls to the outside and spins left. It looks like that would be hard on your golf shoes. I wonder of Scottie wears out golf shoes as fast as those NBA basketball players do.<\/p>\n
If Scottie Scheffler wore metal spiked shoes like we did, I don\u2019t think he could do that. They would keep him more \u201cgrounded.\u201d On the other hand, if he could still do that, Scottie would be clawing turf all day! Talk about leaving your mark.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t think that with Micael Jackson\u2019s fast moves on the dance floor, that even he could have done that! I wish they would get preeminent swing instructor Butch Harmon on TV to analyze Scottie Scheffler\u2019s footwork. It could be quite an education.<\/p>\n
As for me, Scottie Scheffler\u2019s footwork makes me feel like I don\u2019t anything about the golf swing. I guess that adage, The Swing\u2019s The Thing<\/em>, is right, so that in golf The Feet Are Not The Thing<\/em>.<\/p>\n[Scottie Scheffler is a prominent member of the PGA Tour Bible study. He often speaks publicly about his Christian faith and how important it is to him and his family.]<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I don\u2019t think there has ever been more analysis in various sports about the proper action that brings success than there has been in the game of golf. That is, there has been so much teaching about how to swing a golf club properly than how to swing a baseball bat, how to throw a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1477,"featured_media":19163,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[95,722,4180,524,6199],"class_list":["post-19172","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-golf","tag-ben-hogan","tag-dustin-johnson","tag-moe-norman","tag-rory-mcilroy","tag-scottie-scheffler"],"yoast_head":"\n
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