Are you a head case for green?
You know who else is?
The PGA Tour the last winner.
“I have to write down all my thoughts about going back so I can look at them in 10 years and laugh at myself,” 33-year-old Adam Schenk said Sunday after claiming his first PGA Tour title in 243 tries. “I just put mostly one hand.”
Yes, you read that right: Schenk conquered a field of 120 players Butterfield Bermuda Championship — and winds of up to 40 mph — deploying, at least in spots, with just the right hand on the handle.
And even when his left hand joined the party, it was mostly just there for show.
“When we were protected from the wind, I could use one hand and hit a lot of nice shots,” Schenk said Saturday after his third-round 67 moved him into a tie for the 54-hole lead. “I had a couple of lips. I don’t think I did any one-handed today, but I would put my left hand barely on top, so it was basically like putting with my right hand.”
On Sunday, in conditions more suitable for kiteboarding, Schenk was unfazed – hitting the irons 130 yards into the breeze and shooting a par 71 to finish at 12 under for the week, one better than Chandler Phillips.
But back to the one handed decision. Schenk has long maintained that he is less naturally gifted than most of his peers, so he must compete by (1) making as many starts as he can and (2) using his wits. “There’s a lot of people out here who are physically better at golf than I am, and I’ve got to try to outplay them, get as little advantage as I can and not give up anything on the course, and that’s the way I’m supposed to play golf,” Schenk said in 2023. “And I make shots. If I do that, great. You have a chance.”
At Port Royal, where Schenk called the murky conditions “laughable at times,” he made putts. The Tour didn’t have ShotLink in place last week, but it did track shots to the 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 the one-handed putt after a conversation he had in July with 67-year-old Mike Hulbert, who won three times on the Tour, doing it — for the stretch, anyway — one-handed.
Hulbert debuted the technique at AT&T in 1995 Pebble beach National Pro-Am. “I just wasn’t good enough,” he said at the time, explaining the change that had begun in the form of one David Leadbetter-learned practice-green training. Hulbert had immediate success with the new stroke, saying, “I’m able to get a good sense of pace and the ball just flows to the hole. When I’m hitting with two hands, I have a tendency to get very mechanical.”
Schenk, who said he spoke with Hulbert at the 3M Open, said he was intrigued by Hulbert’s advice if not entirely convinced. “Can you do this in front of people? That’s a big question,” Schenk said of his thought process. “Can you do it in the tournament? That’s another big question.”
But then came another stroke of inspiration from nearer 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 when you’re hitting or pitching, the way the club releases and your left hand is kind of a release here.”
Solution: remove the left hand from the process.
The result isn’t pretty, nor is one of Schenk’s other tools, holding the shaft down where the grip meets the metal. But all that matters is at least for now, the unconventional approach is working for him – damn it. As Arnold Palmer used to say, swing your swing. And the same goes for putting: hit your shot.
“I can tell you 10 different ways, theories, techniques that I’ve used in my hotel room this week just trying to figure it out,” Schenk said Sunday in the glow of victory. “I think the answer I’ve found is that there is no answer, it’s just whatever works for you, works for you.”
