LOS ANGELES — Scottie Scheffler never takes decisions on switching his equipment lightly. But his recent form on the green has been so putrid that he’s considering doing just that the week of a major. Scheffler practiced with a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 Plus on Tuesday and said he may bench his gamer for the 123rd U.S. Open at LA Country Club.
“You guys can find out Thursday,” he said with a laugh.
Scheffler, the world No. 1 player, won the Players Championship in March and hasn’t finish outside the top 12 in 13 starts this year. He put on ballstriking clinics at the Charles Schwab Challenge and Memorial, his two most recent starts, only to finish one stroke out of playoffs in each due to a balky putter.
“I think it’s strange that I’ve been struggling the past few weeks with my putter,” Scheffler said. “Putting is such a weird thing. Sometimes when you’re on the green and you feel good you feel like you’re never going to miss and then sometimes when you feel terrible you feel like you’re never going to make.”
Despite his recent frustrations on the greens, Scheffler has been proud of the way he hasn’t let bad putts ruin a round but his patience is wearing thin. He made a short-term putter change to a mallet head at the CJ Cup in October and finished T-45, and returned to his his Scotty Cameron Newport. Count NBC’s lead analyst Paul Azinger among those who think Scheffler’s putting will be fine.
“It’s a psychological battle. His technique is very repeatable,” said Azinger during a conference call with media last week ahead of NBC’s coverage of the U.S. Open. “Look, putting is the ghost. If you’re a player and you talk about your putting, it’s going to haunt you. That’s what I believe. If you talk about your putting when you’re putting great, it’s going to haunt you. It’s going to ruin you. If you talk about it when you’re putting bad, it’s going to ruin you. My advice to everyone who ever plays golf: First things first, never talk about your putting. How come? It’s the ghost, bud; you don’t want to do it. That’s what I would say.
“Same with Scheffler. It’s just like, let it go, you had a bad week, you should have won by five, but it didn’t happen. But sometimes those greens and the way your eye is, it’s just you’re just off, and you want to make it mechanical, but it’s just a little psychological battle or it’s just something just minuscule.”
“And you know it all quickly turns around if he gets out there and makes a 12-footer on 1 and a 15-footer on 2, all that is forgotten, all that is gone out of his head, I’m making putts this week,” added NBC roving reporter John Wood on the same call. “Zinger, I think you’re exactly right. It’s a ghost.”
Scheffler’s tee to green game has been otherworldly, bordering on peak Tiger Woods. He is on pace for the second-best strokes gained: tee-to-green season (2.78) since tracking began in 2004, behind only Woods (2.98) in 2006. One school of thought says Scheffler can’t putt much worse, while another suggests if he just putts decently, the rest of the field will be shouting, Katie, bar the doors.
That’s why Scheffler was practicing his putting with a wedge as a training aid and considering the putter switch. Of using the wedge he said it was a drill he did occasionally “as a feel thing just to feel the release.” Of swapping putters he said, “sometimes you just got to bring another putter around there to make the original one scared.”
If Scheffler combines his boffo ball-striking and his deadly short game with an improved putting performance, the results could be scary.
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