Let’s file this under a story that wasn’t a story four years ago but really makes sense now.
It was the start of the 2021 season and at the time a young, free agent Scottie Scheffler was a player of promise but not so much world domination. He had an open bag that consisted of a Ping G400 LST driver, Callaway Mavrik 3+, Srixon UT, ZX7 (4), 5-PW TM P730 and some Artisan wedges.
Pretty stylish bag for a free agent, but from a spec perspective it was a pretty wild scene.
Why? Because all of Scheffler’s irons were an inch over standard length. And the swing weight was well over D6, which for the non-gearheads is like having a heavy weight at the end of a pencil. Plus, these irons were all a hair flat.
You see, the Scheffler we know today is one of the best irons players ever, but in early 2021 he wasn’t even in the top 75.
Then a conversation happened among fitters, his coach, Randy Smith, and Scheffler at the WM Phoenix Open that might have been the most important gear conversation of Scheffler’s career: What can we do to get this iron play cleaned up?
The fix?
The fix was a HUGE change that would have been a massive adjustment for most but a seamless one for Scheffler, and it required very little thinking past a few general fitting principles. Shorten the whole set (3-LW) by .75 and bend them a hair upright to adjust the swing weights to D4. Simple. No different than you would see at your local True Spec.
The result?
Scheffler’s worst year in Strokes Gained: Approach since the switch was fourth, and he’s been No. 1 the last three years.
What can we learn from this?
In simple terms, “go get fit” is the easy way out, but this one goes a bit deeper than that.
Scheffler was already a world-class player with the irons that were too long and too heavy, but when Scheffler and his team were able to get honest about where they wanted to go it took an open mind by the player to make that possible. On Tour, it’s hard to tell a player “your irons are way too long,” since 99.9 percent of these players have been working with world-class fitters since they were in high school. My hunch is that with a talent like Scheffler, perhaps nobody considered addressing that part of the bag because, from the outside, it looked like everything was fine. This switch came as the result of a couple of Tour reps, Scheffler and his team solving the problem together.
It’s funny how things happen on a PGA Tour range. Some tweaks may mean nothing, but this one may have altered history.
Do we have all of them to thank for this amazing career we are watching today? Who knows, but it’s fun to think about.
Scottie’s Old 7-iron spec :
P730
Loft 33
Lie 60
Length 38 EOG
SW D6
