Monday Finish: Kuchar has killer instinct to go with killer smile

In retrospect, maybe we should have anticipated Scottie Scheffler’s PGA TOUR Player of the Year season. After all, Scheffler backed up Korn Ferry Tour Player of the Year honors in 2019 with the PGA TOUR Rookie of the Year award the following season. He played well enough in 2021 to get a captain’s pick on the U.S. Ryder Cup team that beat Europe in the fall, even before his first PGA TOUR victory. He was clearly on an upward trajectory, but his four-month flurry of highlights still came as a shock. Let’s look back at Scheffler’s rapid rise – and analyze what’s changed about his performances since the early summer. Scottie’s spring ascent On the morning of Super Bowl Sunday, 2022, Scheffler was inarguably the best player in the world without a PGA TOUR win yet to his credit. At 15th in the Official World Golf Ranking, his WM Phoenix Open playoff victory over Patrick Cantlay that day made him the highest-ranked American player in OWGR history at the time of his first PGA TOUR title (a record broken later in the season by Will Zalatoris, ranked 14th). That win marked the beginning of one of the most dominant runs seen on TOUR in recent years. Not even one month after he won in Phoenix, Scheffler captured the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, and three weeks after winning at Bay Hill, Scheffler rose to number one in the World Ranking with his victory at the World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play. The 42 days between Scheffler’s first win and his claim on the No. 1 ranking was by far the fastest ascent ever seen on the PGA TOUR or DP World Tour. The run hit its crescendo when he won the Masters Tournament two weeks later. Scheffler was excellent through the bag on the way to his first major win, ranking in the top 10 in the field in Strokes Gained: Off-the-Tee, Approach, and Around the Green. He was in the top 10 in Strokes Gained: Putting, too, until his four-putt on the final green. Scheffler now had four wins on the season, the first winner of the green jacket to reach that number on the PGA TOUR since Arnold Palmer in 1960. What fueled his rise Scheffler had been well above average in the 2020-21 PGA TOUR season, ranking 32nd in scoring average and 33rd in Strokes Gained: Total. His red-hot spring of ’22 owed to a few dramatic improvements. Scheffler ranked 45th in greens in regulation and 83rd in Strokes Gained: Approach per round in 2020-21. Solid, but not spectacular. By the end of May, he had vaulted to 13th in SG: Approach and a lofty 3rd in rate of greens hit. His improved wedge play was a significant change, as well. In 2020-21, Scheffler ranked 157th on the PGA TOUR in average proximity to the hole from 50-125 yards away. On June 1, he was up exactly 100 spots in that statistic – to 57th. The differential meant he went from being one foot farther away than the average PGA TOUR player’s approach from that range – to one foot closer. As if these improvements weren’t enough, he got better on the greens, too. In each of his first two full seasons on TOUR, Scheffler had hovered right around the statistical baseline for Strokes Gained: Putting among qualified players. He was at -0.05 strokes per round in 2020, and +0.02, in 2021. But in his 10 starts from February through May, Scheffler gained more than half-a-stroke on the field, per round, on the greens. In his victory in Phoenix, Scheffler ranked 2nd in Strokes Gained: Putting, one of just three times in his entire PGA TOUR career where he ranked in the top 10 in a tournament field in that statistic. The story since then Scheffler hasn’t maintained the pace he enjoyed in the spring, but still has recorded four top-10 finishes in his last 10 starts. And he’s improved in one big marker. From February through May, he averaged 1.32 Strokes Gained: Ball Striking per round and hit 70.9% of his greens in regulation. Since then, he’s averaged 1.70 strokes per round striking it and hit a sterling 74.1% of greens in regulation. That’s the good news. You can probably deduce what the bad will be at this point: His putting numbers have dropped off significantly. Since June 1, Scheffler is losing more than one-third of a stroke to the field per round on the greens, a rate that ranks 143rd of 180 qualified players in that span. Specifically, it’s been the shorter putts that just aren’t falling like they were in the spring. From February through May, Scheffler made 61.2% of his putts from 5-10 feet. Since then, he’s fallen off to 45% – well beneath the TOUR average make rate of 56.3% from that range. Things are looking up, though. After some typical autumn tinkering with his gear, Scheffler put the Scotty Cameron putter he used for all four of his wins last season back in the bag over the weekend at the World Wide Technology Championship at Mayakoba. The result was the lowest final-round score of his PGA TOUR career (62) and his fewest putts per green in regulation for any single PGA TOUR event (1.60) in 17 months. At the Cadence Bank Houston Open last year Scheffler ranked 2nd in the field in Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green in a runner-up finish. If he’s rediscovered his magic on the greens, it could be a very happy homecoming this week for the affable Texan.

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Most golfers, when considering a purchase to possibly improve their play, are more apt to look for something that goes in their golf bag, rather than on their face. However, Oakley with it’s PRIZM Golf lens, makes the latter worth considering. Before we get into the “how” of Oakley’s PRIZM Golf lenses, consider this possibility: the better you see, the better you’ll play. Think about everything a golfer has to process in the course of planning and executing shots (and putts). In addition to being able to more clearly see a white golf ball against the blue sky, a golfer benefits from more clearly seeing transitions between fairway and rough, and from being able to more accurately see a lie in the rough and process depth cues on an approach from the fairway. On the putting green, the ability to more clearly discern grain and undulations is a welcome one. Oakley’s PRIZM Golf Lenses’ High Definition Optics (HDO) dial back distortion for sharper, clearer vision. According to the company, the PRIZM family of lenses began with an environment-optimized lens for snow and a solution for the loss of visual acuity that’s common in wintry environments. Oakley engineers learned that if they could control and filter light, wearers could see better. The technology has evolved into, among other things, PRIZM Golf Lens technology. According to Wayne Chumbley, Oakley R&D Engineer Manager, PRIZM Golf lenses are a ultimately a tool for golfers to facilitate better information — to better leverage the strengths of their eyesight, and to compensate for natural weaknesses. The lenses allow “good light” through (which enhances contrast and aids depth perception) while filtering out “bad light” (which creates visual confusion). “You have to trust the information to make the right choice,” Chumbley said, pointing out the fact that golf course architects and superintendents often try to create visual confusion with blurred transitions, false fronts, and other techniques. So, does what does a golf course looks like through PRIZM Golf and PRIZM Golf Dark lenses? First, as all golfers know, golf is played in a predominately green landscape. The lenses work primarily to reduce the dominant green tones and amplifies colors adjacent to green. Among other effects, this amplifies the white of the golf ball, allowing golfers to track it better against the backdrop of both course and sky. By contrast, a traditional lens is very flat with no colors amplified and little color separation. By creating peaks and valleys across the spectrum and color separation, PRIZM Golf lenses are able to deliver more beneficial information to golfers’ eyes. PRIZM Golf vs. PRIZM Golf Dark: What’s different about the two? Drilling down further, Oakley has two golf-specific lenses. PRIZM Golf and PRIZM Golf Dark. The company has found the Dark Golf lens, which presents a more balanced, less contrasting view, is more appearing to the weekend warrior. Initerestingly, the pros, perhaps because of their already heightened on-course visual acuity, prefer the standard PRIZM Golf lens with its more pronounced color amplification and higher contrast. Additionally, Oakley says PRIZM Golf is ideal for low to medium light with a VLT of 30% and has a lighter tint, and PRIZM Dark Golf will excel in bright and sunny conditions and has a darker tint with VLT 22. Both lenses feature Plutonite lens material, which blocks 100% of UVA and UVB rays up to 400nm. Flak 2.0 XL The company’s most popular frame for the PRIZM Golf lenses, not surprisingly, has been the flagship Flak 2.0 XL. An iconic Oakley style, Wayne Chumbley called the Flak 2.0 XL “a sport frame that has crossed over for universal appeal” citing the fact that it fits a vast number of head shapes and sizes. With an O-Matter frame for durability, the Flak 2.0 XL is considered Oakley’s most comfortable frame offering “performance fit with lifestyle comfort,” according to Chumbley. As a final note, PRIZM Golf lenses are available in prescription, and a few of the PGA TOUR professionals you’ll see in the lens are actually sporting the prescription variety.

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