You’ve got the biggest putt of your life in front of you. The putt that, for Xander Schauffele, would land him his long-awaited major, and shake all the doubters.
What goes through your head?
That’s what hosts Colt Knost and Drew Stolz of GOLF’s subpar podcast asked. And Schauffele gave a pretty interesting answer about his PGA Championship-winning putt.
“My hands were shaking. I just told myself like, big muscles, stop reading this thing so much, let’s just hit this and commit to it. Don’t call [my caddie] Austin in. Let’s not get all these opinions and freak yourself out. I didn’t want to sit there and psych myself out about an uphill, six-foot putt. I was like just keep it simple, you have done this all day, just smoke this thing and I made it.”
There’s a bunch of interesting stuff in there, so let’s break it down.
1. “Big Muscles”
Schauffele works hard to take his hands out of his putting stroke as much as he can. His unique putting grip is specifically designed for that task, and by reminding himself to use his “big muscles”, he focusing on rocking his chest back-and-forth rather than relying on inconsistent timing with his hands.
2. “Keep it simple”
It was interesting that Schauffele chose not to bring his caddie in for advice on this putt. It’s not that he doesn’t trust his caddie’s advice – he does – it’s that he didn’t want to contemplate too much information when his mind was already racing. That helped him do the final thing…
3. “Commit”
A good final piece of advice for everyone. Embrace the moment, and understand that you can’t control what happens next. Your best chance of success is to put your all effort into the shot at hand. That’s exactly what Schauffele did.
