Tag: Phil Kenyon

Scottie Scheffler’s putting coach has hilarious Masters response to social media troll

A picture is worth a thousand words (and 280 characters).

One of the biggest storylines entering this PGA Tour season was Scottie Scheffler’s putting woes.

The world No. 1 had struggled with the flatstick and after last year’s Tour Championship at East Lake talked with his agent, Blake Smith, about seeing a putting coach on the plane ride home. Scheffler has seen PGA Master Professional and putting coach Phil Kenyon work with different types of players over the years and he appreciated his approach.

“As I watched Phil, I could tell that he was open-minded, and that’s the type of people I like to work with,” Scheffler said Sunday after he won his second Masters in three years. “And we kind of hit the ground running in the fall. I can’t speak highly enough of the decision that (swing coach Randy Smith) also made to be open-minded, not take an ego to it, sit there, watch us work, watch Phil do his thing.”

“Phil is also a guy that doesn’t have a big ego. He just wants what’s best for his players,” Scheffler added. “I’m really, really fortunate to have those two guys as part of my team.”

He might not have a big ego but we now know Kenyon keeps receipts. Back in March, a social media troll said “Phil Kenyon is destroying Scottie” in response to a photo of the two working together at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Scheffler went on to win that tournament and then the Players Championship before a T-2 at the Texas Children’s Houston Open and his recent Masters triumph. A month later, Kenyon got the last laugh.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. In Kenyon’s case, it’s also better than 280 characters.

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Scottie Scheffler sought help from renowned English putting coach ahead of Ryder Cup

Scheffler said he already feels more comfortable over the ball despite making only minor tweaks.

ROME — After another dismal putting performance at the Tour Championship in August, Scottie Scheffler had enough.

So, he sought help, first sending a text the night after the tournament and then calling one of golf’s leading putting coaches, Englishman Phil Kenyon, the next day. A few days later they began working in Dallas on his putting woes.

“Basically he just told me I sucked, he couldn’t believe I’d ever won a tournament with how I putted. That’s what you want to hear, right?” Scheffler joked of their initial meeting. “No, on a serious note, I had a feeling what I was doing wrong. It was something that — my suspicions were kind of answered. It was just I was trying to fix it in the complete wrong way. To get into the details of it would take a little bit of time, but it’s really very simple.”

We’re in no rush, Scottie. Please continue: “The way I moved the putter through the ball, I was kind of fighting the toe rising on the putter as I went through, and so sometimes I’d miss contact a little bit in the heel,” he explained. “In order for me to try to keep my putter head low, the way I would do it is I feel everything in my hands, and what I would do is I would lower my hands. But when I lowered my hands, it actually caused the toe of the putter to go higher and higher. So as the year went on, my hands are getting lower and lower, and the problem is getting worse and worse. It was something I couldn’t figure out, and it was preventing me from hitting as many putts on line as I should have. Like I said this year, I really did hit a lot of good putts. Now I feel like I’m much more consistent hitting my start line, especially my practice.”

2023 Ryder Cup
Team USA golfer Scottie Scheffler works on the putting green prior to the Ryder Cup golf competition at Marco Simone Golf and Country Club. (Photo: Adam Cairns-USA TODAY Sports)

Scheffler won the WM Phoenix Open in February and the Players Championship in March and had an incredible run of consistency during the season, good enough to hold the FedEx Cup lead going into the Tour Championship for the second straight year. The only thing holding him back was a balky putter. He ranked 151st in Strokes Gained: Putting. Scheffler has never worked with anyone other than longtime coach Randy Smith on any facet of the game.

“I called Randy. I said, ‘Hey, thinking about calling this guy named Phil.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I know him, I think it’s a good idea, let’s do it,” Scheffler recounted.

Scheffler said he already feels more comfortable over the ball despite making only minor tweaks.

“Like even something as simple as lining up the ball, sometimes I would do it and sometimes I wouldn’t, and I wasn’t using the line in the right way. Phil kind of gave me a different perspective on using the line that’s been really helpful,” he said. “It’s just little things like that. I haven’t felt like I’ve made a huge change. I just kind of got my mind right. I feel like we made little changes to where I’m more comfortable over the ball and now I don’t have to think about my stroke. That’s pretty much all it is.”

Could Scheffler’s work with a coach who is a native from England impact who wins the 44th Ryder Cup?

“When he came to Dallas, I was joking with him,” Scheffler said. “I told him his stuff is going to work so well he’s not going to be welcome back at his home club when he gets home after the Ryder Cup.”

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Brooks Koepka on putter going cold: ‘I’ve got 36 holes to go, man. I ain’t worried’

Brooks Koepka shot 1 over Friday, but he isn’t worried about slipping too far down the leaderboard at the WGC FedEx St. Jude Invitational.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – For Brooks Koepka, the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational has been a tale of two putting rounds.

On Thursday, the hole looked as big as a basketball hoop and he took just 26 putts en route to shooting 62. But on Friday, the hole must have looked like a thimble as Koepka took 34 swipes and shot 1-over 71 at TPC Southwind. He’s in a three-way tie for third at 7-under-par 133 and trails 36-hole leader Brendon Todd by four strokes.

“I just putted badly,” Koepka said. “It wasn’t really anything other than that.”

The Strokes Gained: putting stat backed up his words as Koepka lost more than four strokes to the field and ranked dead last in the category.

Koepka was skating along just fine early in his morning round, hitting his first 10 greens in regulation and rolling in a birdie putt at No. 11, his second hole of the day. He held the lead at 9 under when his round unraveled at the short, par-4 second hole.

After driving into the left fairway bunker and coming up short of the green, Koepka wedged to 3 feet, 3 inches. That’s when his putter woes struck. Three putts later, he walked off the green with a double bogey, his lead was gone and he was reeling.

“I think it caught a little bit of the bottom lip, I’m not sure. And then the next one, I think it just caught the top lip,” he said.

Koepka switched putting coaches on Wednesday, and despite his struggles on the green, he said he stuck with the new technique that putting guru Phil Kenyon prescribed.

“I felt like I did everything we were trying to do, just wasn’t working, wasn’t seeing the line,” he said. “Even yesterday I said I didn’t feel quite comfortable over anything inside five feet and today it just felt kind of the same.”

After the round, Koepka returned to the practice-putting green and worked with Kenyon some more.

While the putter continuing to plague him, Koepka was pleased with his improved ballstriking since spending time with instructor Pete Cowen. Koepka leads the field in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-green and hit 15 greens in regulation, one more than he did yesterday when he shot 62. Most importantly, his confidence in his game remains intact.

“I’ve got 36 holes to go, man,” he said. “I ain’t worried.”

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Brooks Koepka changes putting coach, rolls rock to career-low-tying 62 at WGC-FedEx St. Jude

Defending champion Brooks Koepka ties his career-best score with a 62 to take the first-round lead in Memphis.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. – Brooks Koepka showed up at the WGC-FedEx St. Jude Invitational, practically the last place golf fans have witnessed his brand of brilliance, and suddenly rediscovered his game as if it were waiting for him in TPC Southwind’s lost and found.

There’s nothing like a hot putting round to make everything better. Koepka birdied the first four holes of his round, the longest streak of his career to begin a round, and barely slowed down en route to shooting an 8-under-par 62 at TPC Southwind for a two-stroke lead over Rickie Fowler and Brendon Todd.

“Everything seemed to click,” Koepka said. “It’s all just the work we’ve put in over the last three weeks of countless hours of beating balls and on the putting green.”

FedEx St. Jude: Leaderboard | Tee times | Best photos | Updates

Koepka hasn’t won on the PGA Tour since winning here a year ago, and entered the week ranked No. 155 in the FedEx Cup standing and in danger of missing the playoffs, which begin in three weeks. On Thursday, he picked up where he left off last year when he out-dueled Rory McIlroy in the final round and looked nothing like the golfer who took 32 putts and tossed his putter in frustration at one point as he lost more than five strokes to the field on the greens last week in the second round at the 3M Open.

“He putted as bad as I’ve ever seen him putt,” Koepka’s full-swing instructor, Claude Harmon III, said.

Over the weekend and on Monday, Koepka spent time with Harmon and teacher Pete Cowen and fixed his swing. But putting remained a bugaboo. Before the St. Jude got under way, Koepka brooded that his putting touch had abandoned him. He entered the week ranked 140th on Tour in Strokes Gained: putting this season. Koepka realized he was drawing the blade back inside, which made it difficult to release properly.

During a practice session on the putting green on Wednesday, Koepka asked Harmon if he thought it made sense to have Phil Kenyon, who specializes in putting instruction and whose students include Gary Woodland, Tommy Fleetwood and Justin Rose, take a look at his stroke. Harmon supported the idea, which led Koepka to approach the wizard in the black arts of putting and say, “Listen, I’m struggling pretty bad and need your help. There’s a reason you’re the best out here.”

Kenyon made a series of adjustments which Koepka described: “You always know my ball sits off the toe, so that’s changed, it’s over the center –  over the line now. My heel is usually off the ground and it’s no longer off the ground. Just the way my left hand kind of works through the putting stroke has become a little bit different. It was kind of the same issue.”

Koepka practiced under the watchful eye of Kenyon for two hours after a rainstorm passed. It did wonders for Koepka on Thursday, although in typical Koepka fashion, he was none too surprised.

“My hand-eye coordination’s pretty good, so I figured it’d be all right,” he said. “My college coach did a drill with me I remember back in college, it doesn’t matter where you line up, whatever is, you can almost will it in just pretty much every time.”

If there’s a will, there’s a way and on Thursday, Koepka made quite an impression. He gained more than three strokes on the green, and ranked fourth-best in the field of 78. He reeled in four birdies out of the gate, beginning with a 9-foot birdie putt at the first and a 23-footer at the fourth. A bogey at the seventh when he missed the fairway to the right was his lone hiccup of the day, but he bounced back with birdies at Nos. 8 and 9 to make the turn in 5-under 30.

Koepka’s clean card on his second nine included an 18-foot birdie at the par-3 11th, a 7-footer at 13, and a two-putt birdie at the par-5 16th. Add it up and it marks the first 18-hole lead for Koepka since he won the PGA Championship last May.

“It feels good to be back to normal,” Koepka said.

How or why a golfer suddenly rediscovers a lethal putting stroke is an enduring mystery. Still to be seen is if Koepka can keep it going.

“One of the things Brooks always says is, ‘I’m not that far away,’ ” Harmon said. “It comes off a lot of times as him being super arrogant, but it’s not. He really believes in himself.”

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