It was a weekend of statement wins and milestone moments across the Tours. World No. 1 Scottie Scheffler defended his title at the Memorial Tournament, becoming the first since Tiger Woods to go back-to-back at Muirfield Village. On the LPGA Tour, Sweden’s Maja Stark captured her first major at the U.S. Women’s Open, holding off World No. 1 Nelly Korda and Japan’s Rio Takeda. Trace Crowe earned his first Korn Ferry Tour win at the UNC Health Championship, while Germany’s Nicolai von Dellingshausen broke through with his maiden DP World Tour title in Austria—despite a blistering final-round 60 from Kristoffer Reitan.
This Week’s Improvement Pivot Point:
Translating consistent short game mechanics and ball position from the sim to the course. It’s the little things—like setup and alignment—that separate a solid chip from a frustrating miss.
Plus, Scott’s got his brother in town from Down Under, and we’re soaking up the good vibes that only family visits bring. Let’s ride that momentum into a week of sharp practice and smart swings.
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Your Weekly Drive: The Friday Fix for Golf Movement & Mastery
Good day golfers. Ever found yourself redirecting blame and making excuses after having an absolute shocker on a golf course? I know that I have. Range was closed. I was a little cold. Didn’t warm up. I hit it in those three old divots. Then we have the podcast for you. We focus on how to fundamentally own your swing. Strike it pure and consistently shoot in the 70s. Be it if you’re a weekend hack, retired and playing daily, a school phenom, or a tour professional, we present and discuss facts and physics pertaining to golf, trying to keep our ego and opinion at bay. We dispel myths such as keep your head down, bend your knees, or my all-time favorite, game improvement irons. So, stop drinking that mythical Kool-Aid and have a sip of ours. I think you’ll find it both inspiring and refreshing. I’m Scott Young, founder of Swing, PGA professional and exour player. Welcome to Pivot the Path. Goodday golfers and welcome to Pivot the Path. We hope this finds you well and having a fantastic weekend. I had the first weekend with my brother in town all the way from old Sydney Town for the first time in New York City about 12 13 years and first time he’s come into swing to see the vision here. So, we’re super pumped and proud and Breto spent about half a day with us on Friday just getting to know the members and how the members come in. We have a bit of a chat. They go do warm up. Hopefully, most of them go do their warm-ups and then they really work on their math face to path, face less than path type of stuff. So, that was cool. Our improvement pivot point comes from playing with one of our members and a dear friend of mine up at a track up in Connecticut. And we actually so in here he rips it. He plays off about I don’t know four or five handicap kind of how he hits the ball and then a couple little things slip on the golf course and this poor chap really stopped enjoying his golf and he said mate Young I can’t I I rip it at swing. I come inside 54 hit a fade hit a draw chip it beautifully except when I go to the golf course it kind of just doesn’t click and I’m really not enjoying my golf. We straightened him out in about 10 minutes just from looking at couple of process. We’re going to get into that uh in our improvement pivot point. I think it’s really important that you take indoor practice in a controlled environment. One could argue that the upside of swinger ts squares and alignment rods. The frustration occurs when you don’t work really hard on that alignment and you take it for granted. And I think many golfers, numerous golfers, in fact, I would argue most golfers have poor alignment on the golf course and ball position. Uh, and so we do a great job of explaining it in here, but potentially I can do a better job also of saying, “Hey guys, you got to make sure you got to go to the golf course and really make sure you work on this alignment.” So that’s our improvement pivot point. We’ll get back to that in a sec. So the improvement pivot point is really taking consistency of short game, ball position, and alignment to the golf course. really important. More on that a little later. And news from the fairways. We had a little bit of a different news from the fairways. I actually had British by the Sea yesterday, which was really cool. So, we had a We’ve got an old Land Rover and we had a British car invasion just north of us in Connecticut where we had probably about 700 Lotus, McLaren, MG. We saw one of my dad’s My dad had an MGTC from about 55. We saw several of those. We had Jags. Anyway, it was awesome. So, we had uh British by the Sea and it was absolutely superb. We talked all things Land Rover with fellow Nutter Land Rover owners. What that little handle does, why did you use that little hinge? And I got some good ideas. So, that was cool. Brother joined us and Dave Ambrose. Shout out Dave. And then we had F1. Speaking of McLaren, uh went one and two again and Oscar Pestri, dude just keeps winning. But I think Oscar’s such a normal guy. He’s not aggressive like Max and so he kind of flies under the radar, but he keeps winning. McLaren won two, so that was pretty cool. Cornferryy Trace Crow smashed his first Cornferry win uh with 21 under. That was great. And that parlayed with DP having a first time winner as well. Nikolai von, I’m going to read this here. Deling Shelzen, Nikolai and uh Trace first had their win. So first corn furry win for Trace, first DP win for for Nikolai. I again I say it each week. Golf’s in a healthy position when the f these first time winners keep winning. So I think that is just tremendous. LPGA had their US Open. This was out at Erin Hills which is just such a magnificent golf course out in Wisconsin. So, if you haven’t played it, go play that and whistling and it’s a really it’s a bit of a hike, but it’s a fantastic place to go play golf. Stay at the America’s Club at Whistling Straits is probably one of the best experiences you’ll find. Uh, and Mayor Stark, seven under. I love when low scores win. Seven under uh won the LPGA US Open, which was terrific. And I think she’d won about two million bucks in her total prize pull pull, the the Young Swede. Yeah, she won $2.4 $4 million over the week, which was great. Uh to basically she’s won more in four days than she has her entire career. So well done, young Suede. That’s terrific. Uh which leads us to the memorial. Scotty Sheffller keeps on winning. So he’s gone backto-back US tour events. He’s gone backtoback memorial events. And I just wanted to touch base on Ben Griffin as well, who I’ve who I’ve played played with. And Ben’s a very consistent man, very consistent golfer. I don’t profess to know him at all, but we played a couple of holes and it was nice to kind of get to know his feel. And it was interesting this week. So again, Scotty Sheffller, just a mental machine. Notice he’s playing with his Whoop. So I’d love to get my hands on that data to see how his heart rate finishes to me. Um I it was a good event, but you know, it was what it was what it was. But Scotty, I’m really enjoying watching him play golf. So he’s three ahead. He’s got a like sidehill left to right on the 72nd hole. So his last hole for par and the crowd whooped and he he kind of was about to putt. He’s got a three shot lead. So he can basically three whack from 9 ft except he stops, takes a walk back, gives the guy a bit of a dirty look and then resets in the moment and then holds that 9-footer slider to win. And it wasn’t the fact that he hold that putt to win the event. It was the fact that he is so caught up in presenting the best of what he does. There’s a ton of PGA Tour guys who would have hit that two puttered, had the win and and and embraced that win and and celebration, which is totally fair enough. So, here’s where Scotty Sheffller separates himself from as a as an elite PGA Tour player. I’m trying to work on this myself. But he’s got a little slider nine-footer to win. Someone heckles or what have you or gives him a shout out. He steps away, switches off, and again, we’ve seen him play for four days with no emotion. Like, he is just emotionless on the golf course, resets, goes back into his pre-shot routine, drains a really difficult little left to rider in front of 30,000 people, wins the event. And I thought, wow, not since the days of Tiger, get back to Rory and all the little missed putts that Rory’s had over the last couple of years. Not since Tiger Woods have we seen a golfer so invoked in his pre-shot routine that you can’t help but think he’s going to win all the majors this year. That that’s my kind of gut feeling. that 9-footer and compare that to Rory’s missed putts of the last year. That 9-footer was such a deafening moment to me because it says he’s playing every shot irrespective of position on its merit. He’s in front of 40,000 people. Doesn’t care. It It’s like the position of the event irrelevant. He is just chasing mental perfection. So, again, I’d love to get that whoop whoop uh numbers and see what his heart rate is doing on that 72nd hole. My gut feeling is his heart rate’s doing nothing. And for those pundits who have bagged him and said he’s not emotional, as soon as he drained that putt, he just it it literally it’s like he flicks a switch and he’s just a normal human guy and he’s laughing and joking. He’s hugging his caddy. Had a bit of a tear when when Amanda asked about his wife and her importance. And I I mean I know the importance of Rosemary with our podcast and you know we might I might be the face of this brand but you know Rosy’s the brains behind it. And so it was nice to see him shed a tear on camera. He just appears to have the ability to be completely unemotional when he’s playing golf. And I think it’s awesome. I mean it’s not the greatest thing to watch on TV but I just I’m falling in love with this guy knowing how brilliant he is emotionally. And so I think that’s pretty cool. So shout out to to Scottish Sheffler. I thought Ben Griffin had a fantastic and powerful moment, but Benny Griffin won last week’s PGA Tour event. First time winner even though he won the Forsomes the back nine of his of his event on Sunday. He’s gone par bogey bogey par eagle birdie and then double. And so I think being in that position where Scotty’s pushing him or he’s trying to chase Scotty, I think he just faltered a little bit, even though he didn’t win the memorial, I think he’s going to be a far better golfer in weeks to come. So I hope that Ben’s waking up this week going, “Look, I faltered when the pressure was on, but I can learn from those mistakes, and it wouldn’t surprise me if Ben just steps up his game.” when I played with him and he was having maybe just a muckaround, it wasn’t anything brilliant compared to like a Cam Young who smashes it or a Jordan who’s got an amazing short game, but he was just so consistent. And maybe last week’s little bit of a falter on the back nine might give him a kick up the ass to work out where he needs to improve to really go on with it. So, I’m actually really excited to see where Ben goes with his game. So, good on you, mate. Uh and then uh on the greens for us, I played with with this with our member who who I played uh some really lovely golf. Had a fantastic time. Thanks Jonno up at Connecticut Golf Club and I didn’t hit the ball brilliantly well, but chipped and puttered like a like a freak and really working hard on my short game in here. And that’s what we’re going to do with our improvement pivot point. How can you ensure that your short game practice in a controlled environment? Obviously, we use synthetic grass, so the club doesn’t dig as much as real grass. However, it does dig. Uh, but it’s really important that you create the tone. And why I’m so hard on our members making sure they don’t kick the T-sques away is because I think they take for granted where the ball position is relative to their body. And when you go outside and don’t have T-sques and alignment rods and data, it’s really easy to fall into some poor habits. And so, I was super proud of keeping around Pville. I think we played about 12 holes in the bucketing rain, which I love. I love playing in the ranks. You know, no one else is out there. Uh, and we wanted to get into that for our improvement pivot point. So, shall we? Let’s dive in here. Okay, so the improvement pivot point when we’re chipping in here, and I kind of really proud of how we lay this. So, I lay this grass. So, this is resembling into the grain. You’ll see how much the club grabs. This is my low bounce. The club’s grabbing. And if I grab my high bounce, the club doesn’t grab nearly as much because the club bounces. So, we laid or I laid the grass with different grain. And where I wanted to touch on improvement pivot point today, if I’m playing, this is like Florida or anything with fantastic grain or if I’m a tight li, if I’m a chunky lie, I’ve got to take the grain in this case of the synthetic grass into play. And you’ll again, you can’t see it as much as I can feel it. This lob wedge because it’s got three or four degrees of bounce really digs. Now, what happens when you play golf at swing? We’ve got T-sques. Quick recap. We’ve talked about this the last couple of days. Make sure I’m absolutely dead squared to camera here. My sternum is where the club hits the ground verbatim. Scott, Tiger, whomever. My sternum is where the club hits the ground. The club’s on a declining angle. Hits the ground at sternum. continues to work on a downward angle to left shoulder sockets. So low points here. So the reason I’ve got the T-sques is to teach the brain where my sternum is relative to Tsquare and ball. And what happens when guys come up and chip? If I go forward here a little bit and I open my stance, they’re going to chip this way and say, “Right, because this ball’s off my back foot as my brain sees it, I’m good to go and hit ball first. But if I keep my heels where the where they are and I rotate parallel to target line, all of a sudden my sternum’s three inches behind the ball and I am going to hit the ground first. And it can destroy your whole game of golf. And one of our members was really not enjoying his golf because when he took his club out of his bag, he’d open his stance and he’d be chipping this way and he’d be like, “That’s off my back foot.” But if I lay a club down on target line, keep my heels on the ground, and re- rotate back, my sternum’s 4 in behind that ball. So just because of his lack of detail of process, it started to get into his chipping. He started double hitting chips, which means he’s standing over an eight. I’m thinking, well if I hit the if I miss the green, I’m not going to get up and down. So at swing, we create process. So in this particular instance, if you want to open your stance, fine, but get the sternum in the right position. So if I have a little chip, so velcro on, switch on. If I have a little chip, wow, that’s grainy. So I want to move that off my back ankle. If I want to open myself up, get the ball position relative to sternum, then open yourself up. If you want to create, create one. Look at uh landing position. Replicate. There’s a perfectly and you can see how much that club hits the grain. Right? That’s my high bounce. If I wanted that ball to come out with a little a little more spin and a little softer, create the feel. Wow, that’s grainy. So, adjust where I want the ball position. If I have my sternum ahead, I’m going to hit ball first. Create. Wow, that grabs. Create. Replicate. Now, I know the ball’s so far back and that thing’s going to to nip right away. So, remember when you’re playing golf, ensure that the ball is where you want it relative to sternum and low point, and you’ll be good to go. Right? Always make sure you know where the ball is when you’re chipping and pitching, relative to strike. Sternum is where the club hits the ground, and low point is left shoulder. Beauty golfers, look, thanks for listening. Remember, the newsletter drops on Friday. Share it with your mates. You can absolutely own your swing with the work you put into your game off the golf course. Cheers. We’ll see you next week. [Music]
