2024 season. He noticed Scheffler tended to aim too far to the right, and that his right hand sat more on top of the grip which would cause it to take over. “Too much radial release” could change the lie angle severely during his stroke. Scheffler’s hands would com- pensate by dropping low and aiming his shoulders left. His stroke featured lots of wayward heel strikes. Short putts could become misery. Kenyon began subtracting this com- plex set of compensations layered over each other. Under Kenyon’s watch, Scheffler widened his stance, straight- ened his alignment, changed his torso KENYON FLEW TO TEXAS FOR WEEKLONG SESSIONS WITH SCHEFFLER AHEAD OF THE 2024 SEASON.
position, and raised his hands slightly at setup. This all minimised excess face rotation. But as the changes were em- bedding, something still wasn’t clicking. In an earnest attempt to solve his aiming issue, Scheffler began using the alignment stamp of his golf ball for the first time in his career. He did, indeed, start aiming more accurately but be- came “line-locked.” Whenever he saw that line wobble as the ball rolled, his confidence took a hit. “At the back of your head, you’re like, wait, did I hit that putt good?” Scheffler said. The alignment line wasn’t a fit for Scheffler, so Kenyon said ditch it. Schef- fler’s team started testing different put- ters to see which one their man could aim the best. They landed on a grey TaylorMade Spider Tour X with a white insert and a white alignment marking on the top with a thinner black line within. Scheffler aimed this new putter just as well with no line on the ball as with his blade-style putter with a line. Scheffler said it “freed him up.” He won three of the next eight majors and finished inside the top 10 in four others. He had 13 wins across two sea- sons in all. In 2025 Scheffler ranked 22nd on tour in SG: Putting. “I had watched Phil before and watched him coach players. I saw play- ers he coached putt well in a variety of different ways,” Scheffler said. “Phil doesn’t have a big ego ... I could tell that he was open-minded, and that’s the type of people I like to work with.” Such anecdotes provide a messy an- swer to the question of what the high- est-profile putting coach on the planet knows. He knows how to make small changes to isolate specific joints when they start causing problems. He knows how to use something as simple as a coin to make a nuanced technical fact feel simple. He knows when to guide a player towards a system when he needs one – and away from one when he doesn’t. Kenyon does it all in a way that gets the best players on the planet to buy in and trust him, even when the putts don’t always fall. Kenyon’s mastery is like putting it- self in that it’s a combination of hard and soft skills. Jeff Bezos once said his job, in simplest terms, is to get a small amount of important decisions correct. The same might be said of Phil Kenyon.
of his right hand towards his right forearm wouldn’t open or close the face as excessively, making the putter face stay squarer to the arc for longer. With this problem movement side- lined, Rose ranked 17th and 21st in SG: Putting the next two seasons, and ascended to World No 1. “I think you can be a good putter when you know nothing and putt purely on instinct, and I think you can be a good putter when you know a lot about what you’re doing,” Rose said. “I found that when I knew just a little bit about what I was doing, I got worse. I didn’t under- stand enough. I had to go on a journey to truly become a master at the craft. Phil has been instrumental in that journey.” SCOTTIE SCHEFFLER Moved from 162nd in Strokes Gained: Putting to 22nd. In 2023, Kenyon’s phone rang. On the other end of the line was Scottie Schef- fler, statistically the best ball striker in golf since Tiger Woods. But the World No. 1 – pupil of Randy Smith for now over 20 years – ranked 162nd in putting and had ended the season with no majors. Kenyon flew to Texas for weeklong sessions with Scheffler ahead of the
GOLF DIGEST SOUTH AFRICA 93
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