After putting together the best season since peak Tiger Woods, World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler showed up to his first round at the Hero World Challenge with a new putting grip.
The claw!
Scottie’s right hand
You’ve probably heard of the claw at this point. It’s one of the most common alternative putting techniques on tour. It involves cocking the golfer’s trail wrist and placing the right hand on top of the grip. This puts players’ trail hand in a more passive position, which makes it harder to pull putts left. That’s why most golfers adopt this grip.
During the first round at the Hero World Challenge, Scheffler used the claw on putts from shorter range, which makes sense. Scheffler is surprisingly good from longer range but can tend to struggle from shorter range. There’s simply lots of upside if this works, even a little bit.
There's huge upside to Scottie trying the claw from short range.
He's a very underrated mid-to-long range putter
14th in 3-putt avoidance
10th in Approach Putt PerformanceIf the claw helps him get just a little better from inside 10 feet (139th last season), MASSIVE win. pic.twitter.com/McYSEAq1Av
— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) December 5, 2024
Scottie’s left hand (pay attention)
While the new right hand position is interesting, what’s potentially more useful for the rest of us is the left hand position.
Notice how Scottie’s left index finger runs down the grip now when it never used to before.
I wrote about this left-hand grip style right here. It’s called the Fitz grip. A surprisingly high number of players use it, and many of those players work with Scheffler’s renowned putting coach, Phil Kenyon.
If the right hand position mutes the effect of the right hand, the left-finger-down grip stabilizes the left hand. One of the big reasons why is because it stabilizes the muscles in the left wrist, which allows the putter and left arm to move more in unison.
As Golf Digest Best in State putting coach Bill Smittle explains:
“It tends to firm up that lead wrist, which will reduce hinging and promote better putterface control,” Smittle says. “It also brings both your hands closer together, and your wrist joints into alignment. It means your forearm plane is more neutral. When one hand is lower than the other, whatever hand is lowered is usually more extended. Which then puts your forearms out of alignment.”
The best part is that unlike the claw, which is a unique grip unto itself, the Fitz grip is a smaller variation that can be applied to multiple different grip styles. The claw may grab most of the headlines—but it may be Scottie’s left hand technique that proves more influential.
Main Image: Supplied
