Was it an earth-shattering scoop? Admittedly, no. But it was interesting to golf swing nerds at the time, and it turns out, the start of things to come.
Adam Scott was patient zero as far as I can tell. Starting sometime around 2022, before each shot Scott would place the club to his side, with the clubface facing towards the target, and grip the club with his left hand.
It’s the process of setting the club down by his side that helped Adam get his left hand in a good position every time, so he made it part of his pre-shot routine.
Fast forward to this year’s Florida swing, and there are a couple of other players using it. Not because of Adam Scott – that part is a coincidence – but it’s the same basic idea.
The first is Gary Woodland.
Woodland re-joined his former coach, the legendary Randy Smith (who also coaches Scottie Scheffler) over the off-season. Woodland said his grip had inched weaker over the years, which prevented him from turning through the ball and cost him speed.
To get his hand into a slightly stronger position, Woodland began holding the club down to his left side. Not exactly the same as Scott, who would face the clubhead towards the target, but simply by placing the club by his side then taking his grip with his left hand.
“I’ve always had a weaker grip, but it had gotten too weak. I couldn’t see any knuckles [on my left hand] when I look down,” Woodland explains. “I just place the club at my side, then grip it. It puts my hand in a perfect position.”
The issue is that when you hold the club up in front of you as you grip it, then place it down on the ground, your hands can change position slightly. Scottie Scheffler found this out at the Masters last year.
As he and coach Smith discussed in the PGA Tour’s documentary about his 2024 season, his thumb would subtly move positions when he placed his club on the ground. So now, in addition to holding the club in front of him, I spotted him this week at Bay Hill making some grip rehearsals with the club on the ground, rather than in the air. Like you see him doing below.
“The reason I monitor my grip so closely is because, as my body starts to feel different over the ball, my grip is usually the first thing to change to kind of adjust to what my body’s doing that day,” Scheffler says. “It’s not a perfect science…but we have an understanding that you’re not going to be perfect every week but I want to be prepared for when I’m here I’m practising to get ready for the tournament. I’m not hopefully not trying to figure out my swing or my grip.”
Again, this is easy enough to do. You just need to do two things:
1. Make it a priority to pay attention to your grip, as Scottie says.
2. Practise gripping the club with your left hand (for right-handed golfers) with the club down by your left side, to prevent your hand from sliding around.
