Scottie Scheffler will probably be the first to tell you that he would not be anything like the player he is today had it not been for the instruction of Randy Smith, the golf coach he has worked with since the age of seven years old.
Scottie Scheffler has, of course, enjoyed a meteoric rise since turning professional back in 2018. It is easy to forget now that he went into the 2021 Ryder Cup still awaiting his first win on the PGA Tour. Much has changed since then.
Scheffler has won eight times worldwide in 2024, including at The Masters, The Players, the Olympics, The Tour Championship and four signature events. And it is ominous to see how easy the 28-year-old has made winning look at times, particularly in the last 12 months.
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Scheffler appears to have a number of excellent people around him, including his coach Randy Smith. Scheffler has been working with Smith for more than two decades now. Nevertheless, it would appear that there are not too many players on the PGA Tour who have also been coached by Smith over the years.
Scottie Scheffler lauds longtime coach Randy Smith
Speaking on Subpar, Scheffler suggested that he is shocked that more players do not work with Smith, as he also explained just how influential he has been on his career, including when he won at Augusta National earlier this year.
“Am I surprised? Yeah, Randy is like, he’s totally out of his mind, but when it comes to the golf swing, he is such a genius,” he said.
“It really is wild. He’s like a little savant. I was out there before the Presidents Cup and I remember telling Randy, I was like, ‘hey, I’m trying something here, but I’m not going to tell you what it is, I want to see if you can figure it out’. And he watched me hit like five balls. And then he pointed out exactly what I was doing.
“It was literally like the tiniest movement of my left hand with the grip. And he pointed it out within five swings. I was like, how did you do that? Yeah, it’s just little stuff like that is crazy.
“And I’ll tell him some stuff that I’m feeling in my swing sometimes. This year at The Masters, he gave me a swing tip after the first round where the first round I had played good, I’d scored really well, you know, probably the best I did, some of the best I did all year in terms of just playing and scoring and kind of controlling my ball where I didn’t feel very good about how I was swinging it. And I came off the course and Randy was like, ‘great job, how you feeling?’
“I was like, my swing did not feel good today. I felt like I was kind of just scraping it around. And I told him what I was feeling and he gave me one tip about adjusting my grip slightly. And it was, I hit a few shots and it was like, the light bulb went off and I felt what I wanted to feel. And then it was kind of game on from there. I didn’t have to think about anything else.”
Where Scheffler may approach things differently to Tiger Woods
Scheffler does not seem to be the kind of player who would look to tear up a structure that is clearly working in the hope of potentially finding something better. There have been instances where golfers have split with long-time coaches as they attempt to improve further – and the decisions have often felt baffling from the outside.
Whether it is Tiger Woods and Butch Harmon going their separate ways in 2004, or more recently, Viktor Hovland splitting with Joe Mayo, golfers cannot sometimes help themselves from wondering whether the grass could be greener elsewhere.
Scheffler appears to have something great with Smith right now, and there seems to be a lot more success to come. So it is hopefully a partnership which continues to thrive in the coming years.
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