NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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Change is not something that Scottie Scheffler takes casually. The world No. 1 trusts his feel more than data, and if the feel isn’t just right he’ll hold off.
So Scheffler’s transition to the newest TaylorMade driver isn’t as simple as seeing the numbers and making the switch. He first tried the Qi4D driver in the Bahamas in December but started the season with his reliable Qi10 when he won the American Express. He gave the Qi4D another chance at the Arnold Palmer Invitational, where he finished T24 and ranked 19th in strokes gained off the tee, compared to being second in that category for the season. His driving accuracy was 53.57 percent (30/56 fairways) compared to his 60.71 percent for the season, but Bay Hill is a different animal than the other venues he played.
“I hit my irons really nice; I wish I could have [driven] it a little bit better,” Scheffler said after the tournament. “I feel like I saw some good things out of it. We'll see kind of going forward where I’ll be at.”
A few days later ahead of the Players Championship, Scheffler wasn’t ready to commit to which driver would be the bag. If it feels right, he’s not afraid to make the leap even in the meat of the schedule with the Players and Masters on tap.
After being coy about it, Scottie Scheffler goes back to his TaylorMade Qi10 driver at Players.
jared c. tilton, getty images
“I think you’re always kind of looking for ways that you can get better, so I’m always looking for ways that I can improve my game,” Scheffler said. “So I think when you look at the driver, I think there’s always little things you can do to improve. But you’ve got to toe the line, I think, between improving and sticking with the stuff that also works really well. So there’s always that kind of fine line in golf. Like you see guys trying to get a bunch of speed and then it’s like, OK, we gained a bunch of speed but now the irons are getting a little bit worse [or] I’m having trouble with my distance control. There’s always a little bit of give and take.
“So when you look at new technology, I think there’s stuff that’s really good about it. Like with the new driver I’ve seen my spin numbers come down, or sorry, become more consistent, which is really nice. It’s a little bit faster, too. So it’s like, OK, if my spins can stay a little closer together and the ball can go a little bit further, in theory it should be more accurate. But I’m a guy that shapes the ball and does a lot of different things, and so sometimes those little differences can be a bit of an adjustment for me and so a lot of that I’m still kind of working through, if that makes sense.”
So, which driver would it be?
“That was a really long-winded way of saying no comment,” Scheffler said with a laugh. “I don’t know if you could pick up on that.”
Scheffler was back with the Qi10 when play started at the Players.
Daniel Berger came painfully close to winning wire-to-wire at Bay Hill, losing in a playoff to Akshay Bhatia. It would have been his first victory since 2021, before injuries compromised his status among the game’s elite.
Some of Berger’s rebuilt success can be attributed to working with putting coach Phil Kenyon and making the switch from a conventional putting stroke to left-hand low.
“I’ve been doing that for about six months,” he said of the switch that coincided with his work with Kenyon, which he says includes “a lot of things” different that it’s “too much to go into detail.”
“I think any time you take an extended period of time off it’s just difficult. Players get better and you’re sitting on the sidelines and you have to ramp yourself back up and get back into those competitive environments. So that took me a little bit of time.
“Then I spent some time working on some technical stuff … like a swing change. A putting change is the same thing, you have to do it enough times repetitively to feel confident. So that was part of the process.”
Young Swede Ludvig Åberg made a putter tweak before his best finishes of the season (T3) at Bay Hill and Players (T5). He added more loft to his putter than he had during the West Coast swing by switching back from his Odyssey White Hot Versa #1 to his old Odyssey Ai-One #1. He dabbled with a Scotty Cameron on the practice green at Bay Hill but stuck with his Odyssey.
“Obviously, I came out with a putter that had a little bit more loft on it,” Åberg said. “Speed-wise I felt a lot more comfortable. It’s definitely the part of my game where I feel like if that one is clicking then I feel like I can play some pretty good golf.
“We’ve kind of gone back and forth between a couple of different putters. I actually went back to my old gamer that I had last fall, sort of Ryder Cup, Abu Dhabi, Dubai. I was playing the first couple tournaments with a putter with a little bit less loft. Which I felt it came out a little bit too hot, so I went back with this one, my old one. And, yeah, maybe just a familiarity with it. Speed control was a lot better I felt like.
“I’ve always been using an Odyssey, and I went with basically the same putter head, just same insert, just less loft. With the idea that they’re kind of coming out a little bit nicer, but it just came out like a rocket ship. So I felt like at Riviera and at Pebble [Beach], if I closed my eyes and I hit it, it was going to go 6 feet past. So I didn’t love that for the speed control. And now I kind of went back with a little bit more loft, which just makes it come out a little bit more with what I’m used to.”
Scott Michaux
