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How To Drive The Ball Like Scottie Scheffler
4K views
Apr 1, 2025
In this video, Joe 'The Pro' Ferguson talks you through how to shape the ball in every direction - just like the world no.1 and newly crowned FedEx Cup Champion Scottie Scheffler does so easily! One of the things that makes Scheffler such a dominant force in the game is his ability to find fairways by tailoring the shots he hits to the shape of the hole and the conditions he's playing in. After watching this video to the end, you'll have the advice you need to be able to pull off the same type of shots - high, low, draws and fades - which should help you find more fairways and shoot lower scores.
View Video Transcript
0:00
Now, Scotty Scheffler is playing some most incredible and most consistent golf we've seen for many, many years
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Now, there's a lot to like about his game, but the thing that I've really noticed and stands out to me the most is his driving
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One of the most creative drivers of the golf ball in the game, not afraid to move it left to right, right to left
0:16
and varied trajectory to make things a little bit easier for himself. I want to know how he does it, so I've come to the magnificent Royal Liverpool Golf Club host of last year's Open
0:25
to find out and give you some tips and pointers on how you can drive the ball more like Scotty
0:30
Scheffler. One of the things that impresses me most about Scheffler is the bang for his buck he
0:35
gets out of his speed. Now he's by no means slow but he's not the quickest on tour and he's
0:39
disproportionately high up those distance standings and how I believe he does that is he factors in
0:45
conditions and he alters his trajectory to maximize that the most. So for example I'm on the driving
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range here at Royal Liverpool and we've got a nice helping breeze. So one of the first things
0:55
Scheffler would do is try and increase that launch angle, increase the peak height, get the ball in
0:59
the air for longer and maximize that assistance from the wind. That sounds really easy but how
1:04
does he do it? It's as simple as a ball position change. He very much manipulates that ball position
1:10
to create the flights he wants. For example if I'm just making my normal swing here I might be
1:16
kind of just inside my left heel, might be my standard ball position and generally speaking
1:21
that gets me hitting up on it slightly which is great and that gives me the nice neutral flight
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that I want but I want to launch this into the stratosphere so I'm going to alter that
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at least half a ball to a ball further forward in my stance so I want to see that more
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off my left toe so what that does straight away is it puts me my stern and my head more behind the
1:40
golf ball and increases that attack angle which will help me launch the ball up into the air
1:45
Now the other thing you want to do here as well as changing that ball position is don't be afraid
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to give it a good whack. We need speed to be able to generate height and distance
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And we've got a forgiving wind here. If we slightly miscue it and it goes left or right
1:59
that downwind tends to help to straighten the ball flight up rather than accentuate any miss So don be afraid to put some extra oomph into these ones when you trying to launch it into the air so like I said ball position forward feel like it off that left toe for a right hander sets me up behind the
2:16
ball and then I'm in a good position to just give it a ride
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so that's exactly what I was hoping for staying behind the ball increasing that
2:28
launch angle and really giving it a good whack has really increased that peak
2:32
height and that can be a really strong weapon downwind. Now conversely to downwind obviously
2:38
for every hole you play downwind you might play one back into the wind and not only in windy
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conditions when the ground's firmer I've seen Sheffler bring that ball flight down that peak
2:47
height comes right down to maximize that forward momentum and that run. So again how does he do that
2:53
Similar but opposite to the high shot so the ball goes fractionally back in the stance but not too
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far back. A lot of people make that mistake of thinking I'm going to keep this ball down, get the ball right back in the stance and that brings the attack angle right down which actually
3:06
increases the spin. So it's a very subtle move back, maybe half a ball in the stance. So again
3:12
from my normal position which might be inside my left heel, maybe half a ball closer to the centre
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of the stance. That just reduces that attack angle slightly without it becoming excessive and the next
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thing you need to do which might be counterintuitive when you're trying to maximise your distance, just slow that swing down to a more comfortable pace. The less momentum we put into that the less
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spin we're likely to generate this is all about taking spin off. So a nice comfortable smooth
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motion with the ball half a ball back should all things being equal just come out a little bit
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flatter less spin when it hits the deck it just wants to go forward. So again got a slightly lower
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t-peg as well than the last one because we don't need that launch we're trying to encourage a flatter
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launch angle. So instead of being off the left heel I'm going to move it back in my stance just a
4:00
fraction and all I'm going to do is make my normal swing but just at a slightly smoother, what feels
4:07
like 80 motion to me Exactly again as I was hoping just taking that pace off the swing having the ball slightly back in the stance that come off so much flatter and i would imagine five to six hundred revs less
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spin so when that hits the deck it's going to want to bounce and run and run and run and the wind
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barely touched that so that's a really useful weapon just altering tee height ball position
4:34
and swing pace and you can create a completely different flight which is really useful
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Another thing I love about Scheffler's driving is how he's not afraid to start moving the ball
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from right to left and left to right at will. He's not one of those one-dimensional players
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who just repeats the same shot and the reasons I like that are twofold. It makes fairways wider
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So all of a sudden if you're shaping the ball with the contours of a fairway or with the curve
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of a fairway, all of a sudden the angles are much more suitable to hit those fairways and create
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more accuracy so you'll see him a lot on right to left right to left dog leg holes like the 10th
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Augusta for example the hooks he was hitting around there and the masters were absolutely spot
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on similarly 11 you'd see him fading the ball around the corner so within two holes you can
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see completely different shapes of shot which is to open up the angles and make it easier to hit
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those fairways but also on the tour I've seen him do it to maximize distance all of a sudden if
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you've got a slope off the right and you've got that ball hitting the deck and it's coming more
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down the slope with a right to left shape you're going to get some more roll out and again you
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really maximize that distance he really gets the most out of his output so how does he do it so for
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the right to left one from my point of view and for those of you at home it's probably best to
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keep it really simple some people like to feel things through impact with rolling of wrists etc
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i think most simplistic way to change ball flight is just through setup it's a simple path and face
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relationship so if I want the ball to start right and curve to the left simply put my face needs to
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be pointing left of my path at impact so I preset a right path by aiming a little bit further right
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than I ordinarily would and I just feel like the club head is towed in a little bit and then all I
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want to do is continue to swing out what feels to right field over there but with my club face pointing a little bit left of that the face being left of the path will create the spin axis to turn the ball right to left so it as simple as that Body aims right face towed in a
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little bit, swing up your feet line. So perfect. My path was out to the right, face was a little bit
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left of it, ball started right, holding against the wind just turned over slightly and that's
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exactly what I was hoping for. Okay so left to right as opposed to right to left as you'd imagine
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it's just a mirror image we do the opposite we want the ball to start left so I'm going to move
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my feet and my body alignment to the left and I'm going to have my face slightly open to that target
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so we're creating the face to path relationships that's going to make the ball spin and do what we
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need. Now another thing Scheffler does on these left to right shots is he really varies the tee
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height so he's got kind of a keep the ball in play shot that I see him using an awful lot where he
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pegs the ball down quite significantly it just creates kind of a more squeezy
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impact that just tightens that dispersion knows it's going to go left to right so
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it can be really comfortable with a left start line so I'm going to do the same
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way I just peg it down I'm gonna open my stance and my body up down the left hand
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side about where I want to see it starting leave the face a little bit open I'm just gonna swing along my body line as before
7:43
So that's exactly what I wanted to see. So again, similar to the right to left, I preset that path to the left, so the ball started left
7:53
The face being open to that has created the spin we needed and it's just bled a little bit to the right at the top of its flight
7:59
So all of a sudden, if you know what curvature is going to come, you've got a much better
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idea of where you need to start the ball and what's going to, and you can use it on certain holes to suit the topography, to suit the shape and really open up a whole new world
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of possibilities. So there you have it, four really simple ways to dramatically alter ball flights, both from a left to right and a high and low perspective
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Now a lot of people think that's just for elite golfers, but I hope I've shown you that just a couple of really simple alterations to set up can make all the difference
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and maybe you can start driving it a little bit more like Scotty Scheffler
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