Are you a head case on the greens?
You know who else is?
The PGA Tour’s latest winner.
“I should write down all my putting thoughts so I could look back at them in 10 years and laugh at myself,” 33-year-old Adam Schenk said Sunday after picking up his first PGA Tour title in 243 tries. “Just been putting mostly one-handed.”
Yes, you read that correctly: Schenk conquered a field of 120 players at the Butterfield Bermuda Open — and wind gusts of up to 40 mph — by putting, at least in spots, with only his right hand on the grip.
And even when his left hand did join the party, it was mostly there only for show.
“When we were protected from the wind, I could use one hand and hit a lot of nice putts,” Schenk said Saturday after his third-round 67 propelled him into a tie for the 54-hole lead. “Had a couple lip-outs. I don’t think I made any today with one hand, but I would put the left hand just barely on top so it was basically like putting right-handed.”
On Sunday, in conditions better suited for kiteboarding, Schenk was unflappable — punching 130-yard 5-irons below the breeze and shooting an even-par 71 to finish at 12 under for the week, one better than Chandler Phillips.
But back to the one-handed putting. Schenk has long maintained that he’s less naturally gifted than most of his peers so he has to compete by (1) making as many starts as he can, and (2) using his wits. “There’s just a lot of people out here that are just physically better at golf than me, and I have to try and outsmart them, gain any little advantage I can and give up nothing to the field, and that’s the way I have to play golf,” Schenk said in 2023. ”And make putts. If I do that, great. If I make putts, I’m going to have a chance. If I don’t make putts, I just don’t have a chance.”
At Port Royal, where Schenk called the blustery conditions “laughable at times,” he made putts. The Tour did not have ShotLink in place last week, but it did track putts per green in regulation, a category in which Schenk ranked 22nd in the field for the week with a 1.73 average.
Schenk was inspired to try one-handed putting after a conversation he had in July with 67-year-old Mike Hulbert, who won three times on Tour, putting — for stretches, anyway — one-handed.
Hulbert debuted the technique at the 1995 AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am. “I just wasn’t one-putting enough,” he said at time in explaining the switch which had started in the form a David Leadbetter-taught practice-green drill. Hulbert enjoyed immediate success with the new stroke, saying, “I’m able to get a good sense of rhythm and the ball just flows toward the hole. When I putt with two hands, I have a tendency to get too mechanical.”
Schenk, who said he spoke with Hulbert at the 3M Open, said he was intrigued by Hulbert’s counsel if not fully convinced. “Can you do that in front of people? That’s a big question,” Schenk said of his thought process. “Like, can you do it on Tour? That’s another big question.”
But then came another stroke of inspiration from the most relatable of sources.
“I saw something on Instagram like a day or two later,” Schenk said, “and it’s like the left hand messes up a lot of things in the short game, especially in the putting stroke and as you’re chipping or pitching, the way the club releases, and your left hand’s kind of releasing way out here.”
The solution: remove his left hand from the process.
The result isn’t pretty, nor is one of Schenk’s other go-to putting hacks, holding the shaft down where the grip meets the metal. But all that matters is at least for now the unconventional approach works for him — looks be damned. As Arnold Palmer used to say, swing your swing. And same goes for putting: stroke your stroke.
“I can tell you 10 different ways, theories, techniques I’ve used in my hotel room this week just trying to kind of figure it out,” Schenk said Sunday in the glow of victory. “I think the answer I come up with is there is no answer, it’s just whatever works for you works for you.”
