IIt would have been understandable if 33-year-old Adam Schenk had seen himself as what legendary golf writer Dan Jenkins called a persistent victim of an inexorable fate.
A golfer chasing a destiny that cannot be changed.
“Too stupid to quit” is how Schenk described himself on the eve of winning the Butterfield Bermuda Championship, his first PGA Tour victory in 243 career starts.
It’s the evil magic of the game that keeps someone like Schenk — or thousands of others who play golf without the guiding attention of the PGA Tour — coming back for more despite the frustrations.
It’s also the desperate fuel that drives players to defy convention because, honestly, nothing else seems to work.
Which brings us back to Schenk, who changed his career path by surviving Bermuda’s gusty winds and, when conditions were calm enough, holding the club with just one hand (his right).
It’s one thing to hit putts with one hand on the practice green – it’s part of Tiger Woods’ pre-round putting sessions – but it’s another to do it during a match, knowing that another bad week could force a trip back to Q-School just to keep your job.
That’s where Schenk found himself last week, windswept and wondering if what he did was the right thing or just a Band-Aid. The wind, which at times exceeded 30 miles per hour, made it too difficult for Schenk to putt with one hand all the time, but the fact that he did it and plans to do it again this week at the RSM Classic is a testament to his willingness to try something radical.
Call it the any-port-in-a-storm approach.
“I don’t want to say I don’t care what anyone thinks, but I have a belief in what I do and how I do things and that was probably bigger than anything this week, just seeing that belief permeate and how I do things,” Schenk said after the win moved him from 134th to 67th on the FedExCup Fall points list.
“There is a method to the madness. It’s not always right, but that’s fine. I prefer to swing it my way and learn along the way and get advice from a small circle. It’s just incredible that it finally came true.”
“Then I hit a few and I thought, OK, that’s a little weird. Can you do that in front of people? That’s a big question. Like, can you do it on tour? That’s another big question.” – Adam Schenk
When you’ve only made the cut in 11 of 27 starts and have twice missed six cuts in a row, there’s an abundance of data to confirm that something needs to change. At the age of 33, with a wife and two young children, the pressing question also arises whether you are doing the right thing.
Then Mike Hulbert shows up.
Hulbert won three PGA Tour events in the 1980s and 1990s and was a regular presence on the tour for many years. He also put together a full season one-handed on the PGA Tour.
When Hulbert saw Schenk looking for a stroke to believe in at the 3M Open in late July, they started talking. Hulbert explained that he played an entire season without putting his left hand on the putter when he made a stroke.
As Hulbert talked, Schenk watched him hole five of six mid-range putts with a one-handed motion that seemed as simple as spreading a warm cookie.
“Then I hit a few and I thought, OK, that’s a little weird,” Schenk said. “Can you do that for people? That’s a big question. Can you do it on tour, for example? That’s another big question.”
Schenk isn’t afraid to dive down rabbit holes while pursuing one theory or another, and when asked to explain his one-handed putting decision, he wrote a thesis on how the left hand can get in the way of both a putting stroke and short shots.
In Bermuda, the carpet in Schenk’s hotel room was ideal for practicing his putting, so he worked on the one-handed method for an hour, all the while watching an image on the television warning of high winds on Sunday. That meant adding the left hand to most putts, but as children are sometimes told, this one was there to be seen but not heard.
“So I kind of rested my left hand on top of it. All you can do is go up there, go a little bit to the left and take it back smoothly and just let go and hit it off the center of the putter. If it goes in, it goes in, great,” Schenk said.
Needing to hole a four-footer on the 18th hole to win, Schenk rolled it in – with both hands on the putter – and secured his place on the PGA Tour for another two years.
Schenk sounded like he was joking when he said he should write down his various thoughts so he can laugh about them in ten years, but what he found in Bermuda, even if only for a short time, was enough.
Is there a lesson in that?
“It’s just really hard to get better at golf, I would say,” Schenk said. “It’s really a challenge. I think it’s something that pushes a lot of us to keep grinding and I think most golfers love the grind.”
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