It wasn’t a shot Scottie Scheffler would ever practice.
On the long, reef of the fourth hole in Torrey Pines during the second round of Genesis Invitational in February, Scheffler’s shot found an unpleasant place on the lip of a steep bunker on the road.
The lie was unique, but not so bad that player No. 1 in the world could not find a way to work for him. Scheffler didn’t just want to get the ball from the bunker – grabbing the wood on the navigation path – he wanted to get the ball as close to the green. Accordingly, he adjusted his frame of 6 feet and 3 and put the right leg on the grass skirt surrounding the bunker, while most of his left leg hovered over the sand.
Scheffler turned and made contact, still replicating his sliding swing, which forced his left leg to slip immediately and fall into the bunker while his right leg under him, embarrassingly composed. His body, however, kept, and ended as the rinse ball rose through the air and landed near the green. Scheffler made a par.
Don’t try it at home 😬 pic.twitter.com/ghjovha8ly
– PGA Tour (@pgatour) 14 February 2025
“This is one of those (shots) where you are just in an unpleasant position and I have to take a strange attitude and make a strange swing and get the ball somehow,” Scheffler said. “Sometimes I’m pretty good in it.”
The moment was a small view of the underestimated part of the Scheffler experience. There is a foundation behind the elite Ballstrking and a weak swing with legs and slipping, which has been built not only on other world skills, eager repetition and commitment to technology in the last three years, but also powered by an emphasis on condition that has unlocked Scheffler’s best golf in the last three years.
“It was not originally a rat gym,” said Scheffler’s executive coach and coach Dr. TROY VAN BENEZEN ESPN. “It took several situations when he was in college to finally pull out the trigger and realize that he had to put some time outside the golf course to stay without pain and compete at a high level.”
Last year, no one played a higher level than Scheffler, who won the Masters and seven other tournaments. This year, after he needed surgery after a cooking accident, and his first two starts of the season were missing, Scheffler had to win and showed that he was not immune to the peaks and flows of the game. It is another reminder that when in four years the search for the third championship victory begins, it is what it can hang up, especially when it comes to his work before reaching the first tee.
“You can’t control the wind in golf, you can’t control a bad reflection, or even your swing,” said Van Biezen. “But we can control your fitness level; we can control everything.”
Van Biezen, a coach of a performance based in Dallas, still remembers when he and Scheffler began to work together and Scheffler was just another “little boy” at the age of 14. Like many junior golfers who saw Van bienna in their early adolescents, when they began to experience back pain, Scheffler’s growth from high school to college was a favorable moment of his early career.
“When Mother Nature turns, it can create a lot of imbalances and asymmetry,” said van Biezen. “Because the golf swing is based on repeated movements to specific muscle groups, these imbalances, asymmetry can cause pain and injury. … Scottie grew really fast and lost a lot of flexibility.”
Van bienten, who is currently director of Performance Pro Dallas starsHe sees his role as a crew chief who cleans these physical weak ties through a focus on mobility, stability and strength. Van bienten also worked Jordan Spieth and Tiger Woods For several years to help crystallize his philosophy and goals.
“I come from a hockey background, so I have always been a supporter of large butts and big legs,” said Van Biezen. “One of the things Tiger told me was, you know, physically, emotionally, mentally, wants to be as strong on Thursday morning as on Sunday afternoon at the back of nine.”
Due to the growth of spurt, the newcomer season in Texas went out of a promising concern when he tried to interrupt the par. At that time, Van Biezen worked hand in hand with Scheffler’s rocking trainer Randy Smith and Texas coach John Fields to face the factors that influenced Scheffler when he literally grew-13 inches in a 14-month-old span-and figuratively back to one of the best amateurs.
Although he won twice on the Korn ferry tour and won his PGA Tour Card for the 2020 season, Scheffler had difficulty completing the tournaments, holding the lead and simply not able to transform good weeks into victory. Van Biezen was constantly looking for weaknesses, and a closer look at Scheffler brought a hard reality.
“The cardiovascular point was not at the level we wanted him to be on Sunday afternoon,” said Van Biezen.
Solution? Offseason Boot Tábor is heading until 2021 to create Scheffler’s power, flexibility and strength, but especially its endurance.
“We did a lot of metabolic training, a lot of burners after training, just really pushed it hard, really emphasized the nervous system,” said van Biezen. “So when it came down to Sunday afternoon, especially on the main weeks, he would be ready to complete the agreement.”
Van Biezen is the first to be careful when attributed to any superior meaning for the fitness itself, but as Scheffler’s game became sharper, his experience on the bigger tour, Hyperfocus in his condition was in some ways cheated code that Scheffler gave over the top – again and again. In fact, during the last six events of the PGA Tour, where he held 54-hole leadership (he did not count the 2024 tour championship), Scheffler won all of them.
“We just got to the point where I was able to get rid of many pains and pain I dealt with when I was in college,” Scheffler said In an interview talking about GolfForever, a fitness program that he uses with Van Biezen. “And I got to the place where my body is, I feel it is really healthy, but it was a long way to get to the point where I was in balance for a long enough time when we could really start building a little muscle.”
As Scheffler has previously emphasized, he does not try to build a disproportionate amount of energy or speed to hit the ball. But understanding how to consistently move his body efficiently to alleviate pain and maximize the hyperspecific movements that require a golf swing is as essential as knowing how to fly 7-weighing.
“When I correctly turn into the right side, I can load and then push away and easily get back to my left side versus a kind of conversion,” Scheffler said. “If I didn’t work and did the things I did in the gym to play golf, I couldn’t keep my body as I have been in the last 10 years.”
“How fast can you throw in 30 seconds?”
Inside the gym where Scheffler trains in Dallas next to other professionals Tom Kim and Ryan PalmerThis is often a challenge that connects to Scheffler’s competitive fire when he does not have a club in his hands.
“Scottie loves Chir in the gym,” Van Bězen said. “Once we had the strength of the day, and Scottie had a respected vest that was doing something called Skater squats and Scottie says to Tom,” You can’t do it “and push Tom to do it, so they go back and forth, fight each other and push each other.”
Van Biezen quickly found that working with Scheffler would almost always require part of the competition to make the most of offseason training and training.
Nowadays van bienné with Scheffler does not have to be known to know what he needs. He and his team know the inscriptions for the narrative that are triggered when he cannot load to the right side, causing his swing to fall into the tilt of the reverse spine and exposing his back to potential discomfort. Whether it is on the extent or on the course, Smith’s awareness of this particular problem is now the second nature; He knows how to be careful, and often sends van bienna video or text from a row to see and offer help.
“I started with him from Ground Zero,” Van Biezen said. “I’ve known Scotty for so long, I see how his body moves, and then I’m a little engineer a bit of these movements, and then introduce exercises in the gym to basically either clean this bad movement pattern or activate a certain part of the body or muscle group.”
The group has a set of mobility exercises that Scheffler can go through to focus on the internal hip rotation and support more turns instead of tilt. Although it is seemingly small, this gentle difference is Gargantuan and can often mean a gap between a good Balč’s week and an elite, the difference between second and first.
Scheffler, van bienno, said, is curious about what he does not know and is not afraid to ask why he is asked to do something in the gym. However, as soon as the results were poured, there was no hesitation in receiving the Gospel of Van Bienni. In fact, the relationship between better fitness and better golf has led Scheffler to take several of his own steps, add a cold drop, red light therapy and Normatec’s compression shoes at home to improve his recovery.
“Everyone wants a sexy part, they look at Rory or Tiger a long time ago, strength, speed, gas, jumping, which we do,” Van Biezen. “But it’s monotony.
Although van bienten is not always on the way with Scheffler, there is a routine that Scheffler usually follows during the tournament weeks. Monday is usually one and only difficult day. Tuesday is a functional day of mobility. Wednesday, which usually involves playing Pro-am plus other practice, there is no extra work. Once the tournament starts, its preliminary mobility will come in handy around his tee, allowing any change if it needs.
“Your body is a dynamic entity. It will always change, be it bad beds, aircraft ride, anything,” Van Biezen said. “So we’re kind of reading and responding a little week for a week.”
If the last piece of the optimization puzzle occurred, van bienn-so nutritional medical doctor-he assured that Scheffler would help there with the help of another member of the Scheffler close group: Scheffler’s wife Meedith.
“He is very healthy oriented,” said Van Biezen. “She stays on it and ensures her healthy. She gets it from me and gets it from her so he really can’t hide it.”
Eating was not a serious problem for Scheffler, but in this department Van Biezen became a teacher, explained what and why Scheffler and allowed him at least some flexibility. Although North Star is always to build the best version of Scheffler before hitting a shot in competition, even the best player in the world has his weakness.
“He loves his pizza,” Van Bězen said with a laugh. “So we are a compromise and I choose and choose when to eat it.”
