ORLANDO, Fla. – If Bay Hill Club and Lodge is known for anything, it’s firm greens that guys are trying to hit mostly with mid- to long-irons. No wonder Scottie Scheffler, who statistically has enjoyed a three-year reign on the PGA Tour’s strokes-gained-approach ranking, has twice slipped on the red, alpaca sweater as winner of the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Scheffler’s secret to success around Arnie’s Place? Perhaps it’s a certain shot that he hits.
A couple weeks ago, Golf Channel profiled upstart PGA Tour pro Ryan Gerard, an elite ball-striker in his own right, who provided some insight into his obsession with a shot that Scheffler was hitting while the two were paired together last year in Houston. In layman’s terms, when most players try to take speed off shots to hit gaps in their yardages, the ball flight and spin both come down; Scheffler, though, can hit these types of shots without sacrificing either, which makes him especially lethal on firm greens.
“Scottie hits this shot with this smooth knockdown swing, but he launches it higher, spins it more, and it bridges the gap between two full numbers,” Gerard explained. “I’ve kind of been obsessed with this shot since I played with him the final round of Houston last year, and I’ve gone about learning how to hit it. The ball is a little more forward in my stance, I choke down on it and feel like I’m slowing down through the ball and speeding up after. That launches it higher with less speed. I don’t have the extra spin like Scottie, but it’s coming out higher and softer. … I think it’s going to serve me well at Players, Augusta, PGA, U.S. Open.”
Can add Bay Hill to that list, too, where Scheffler has unsurprisingly never finished worse than T-15 in five career starts.
Scheffler was asked about the shot – let’s call it the Scheffler Gapper – and though he didn’t reveal any secrets, the question did lead into Scheffler providing a fascinating explanation of his approach to practicing and learning different types of shots.
“I felt like coming out of college I wasn’t a great ball-striker,” Scheffler said. “I felt like I had the potential to be a great ball-striker, but I had some things in my swing I needed to clean up. … In the offseason between ’21 and ’22, I made a really big emphasis on learning, really kind of fine tuning how to hit a lot of different types of shots. That’s always something that’s been fun for me. I get bored sitting on the range and working on my golf swing or working on technique and hitting the same shot over and over again. It’s always fun to create and do different things with the golf ball. That’s one of those things that you can always be practicing. You can always learn how to hit new shots. I’ve always been a guy that, when I got out there, whatever I see is typically what I’m going to try and do. So, sometimes that calls for high shots and sometimes that calls for really low shots with not a lot of spin, just depends on the conditions.
“This will be a week in which you’re going to need a lot of different shots, but most of them are going to have to be higher in the air just based on how firm the greens are and how soft the run-up areas are.”
Scheffler continued later in his press conference, “I’ve never been a guy that’s going to sit on the range and be like, ‘Today I am practicing a three -quarter, no-spin draw, and that’s what I’m practicing today, like I’m going to dial that in and hit it over and over again. Most of my practice is going out, getting my baseline, making sure I’m hitting the right numbers. And then when I get to that point and I’m comfortable with where I’m at, then it’s into curving the ball both ways, changing the height, changing the spin, changing what I’m trying to do with the ball. I’m doing that on a constant basis, because I don’t want to ever get too far away from where my neutral is.
“Like if I stood on the range one day and it’s like, ‘You know what, I’m going to practice hitting a draw with my driver all day.’ My swing is going to change trying to hit a draw for an hour straight. It just will. Just because it’s a different golf swing than me hitting a fade.”
After Scheffler’s presser, it was easy to go down the rabbit hole – Do other guys have this shot in their bags? If so, how do they go about hitting it? And if not, how do they go after flags when between clubs?
Justin Thomas controls distance with his hand setup at address and feel on the backswing.
“Everybody has probably different ways they do it,” Thomas said. “Depending upon the club, but, you know, sometimes I’ll even feel like my hands are a little bit behind at address, so I feel like I can still make an aggressive pass through the ball, and the ball just comes out a little bit higher for me. Open the club a little more going back. I’m sure a lot of guys have different ticks for them to maybe feel that or think that. But I’m very feel in terms of how far I’m taking the club back to try to get it to go a certain distance that a lot of it is also feel in that sense, too.”
Collin Morikawa bridges his gaps a different way.
“I control a lot of my distance with curve,” Morikawa said. “So, instead of like choking down and slowing anything, essentially I’ll speed things up and make it curve more. The problem with that is sometimes you can’t curve it in as much. So, I wouldn’t say I’ve mastered that shot, but I would say a lot of my distance control comes from how much cut and spin I’m putting on the ball. Spin’s key. I’m not someone that hits it that high compared to some guys, like Rory. I just know there’s some pins and some greens that I just can’t go after. I just take my medicine, I try and be really diligent about picking the right spots and numbers and go from there. But I wouldn’t say it’s something that I like have to go and master, just because I know my game. If I start adding in that shot, I don’t really know what my misses are going to be and who knows what’s going to happen.”
Rory McIlroy has the shot, especially after a ball change.
“I definitely think it was one of the reasons I went to a softer, spinnier ball was to be able to hit shots like that,” McIlroy said. Really important weeks like this where the greens are really firm, greens at Augusta can get firm, greens at a U.S. Open for example. So to be able to hit a ball that comes down soft but not have to hit it flat out, that’s a skill in and of itself. You can see when Scottie does it he has this sort of high, sort of languid finish when he does it. A little bit like if you look at Tiger back in the day, same sort of thing. So, certainly when the greens get firm, the pins get tucked away, it’s definitely a great shot to have.”