Scottie Scheffler broke his own PGA Tour earnings record this season.
The world No. 1 raked in $29,228,357 – over half of the available money to him on the Tour and well clear of his previous $21million mark.
Scheffler has been in imperious formGetty
Including his $25million prize for winning the Tour Championship and other bonuses, he scooped $62million in 2024.
You would think that his fellow professionals would do anything to copy every facet of his game in a bid to close the gap.
But Scheffler revealed his surprise that there is not a long line of rivals lining up to work with swing coach Randy Smith.
“Yeah, Randy, he’s totally out of his mind. But when it comes to the golf swing, he is such a genius,” he told GOLF’s Subpar when asked if he was shocked more people weren’t working with Smith.
“He’s like a little savant. I was out there before the President’s Cup and I remember telling Randy, ‘Hey, I’m trying something here but I’m not gonna tell you what it is. I want to see if you can figure it out.’
“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.”
Scheffler won a second Green Jacket at the Masters this year – he had Smith to thank.
“This year at the Masters he gave me a swing tip after the first round,” the 28-year-old added.
“I had played good, I’d scored really well. Probably the best I did all year in terms of just playing and scoring and controlling my ball. 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. I hit a few shots and the light bulb went off and I felt what I wanted to feel.
Smith helped Scheffler win two Green JacketsGetty
“Then it was game on from there. I didn’t have to think about anything else.”
Scheffler thinks golfers may have put their trust in tracking software instead of coaches like Smith.
“He has an incredible eye. I think if it was up to him Trackman and video would have never come around and people would be flooding to him,” he explained.
“It is funny with the the Trackman and stuff because I usually practice with mine pretty much every day at home because I’m always looking at distances.
“Randy, if I’m ever struggling, I’ll always try to dive into the numbers and he’ll literally like take the iPad from me like, ‘We don’t need any of this stuff. Stop looking at it like we don’t know how to do this.’”
Smith has been at the Royal Oaks Country Club in Texas since 1977, winning a record 18 PGA of America National Awards.
He worked with 1997 Open champion Justin Leonard, as well as Subpar co-host Colt Knost.
It was while coaching Leonard that Smith first noticed the potential in a seven-year-old Scheffler.
“It was an odd situation,” he told Travis Fulton.
“Somebody at the shop said, ‘Randy there’s a family going to come out and want to see the facilities out here, they want to meet you.’ I said, ‘Meet me?’
Scheffler earned an emotional gold medal in Paris
“But they had this little kid who is the next coming, I had heard. And sure enough they come out, I had just finished a lesson with Justin Leonard at the time and this little kid comes out with a bag as tall as he is, and they set him up to hit some balls down from me and I couldn’t help but glance over.
“And this little kid is making swings that are the same swing every time. I watched him hit balls and within 15-20 minutes I had that a-ha moment. It was totally different.”