Scottie Scheffler’s putting coach Phil Kenyon has named the three golfers he would pick as the greatest ever players on the green.
Kenyon has worked wonders with the world number one over the last few years. Scheffler was 77th on the PGA Tour for strokes gained putting during his astonishing 2024 season.
He is currently 12th for the 2026 campaign. The one obvious weakness within Scheffler’s game has now become yet another strength.
Of course, Scheffler is still a long way off being considered one of the greatest putters the game has ever seen.
The debate over the player you would pick to make a six-foot putt for your life is a fascinating one. Plenty of golfers seemingly found a way to make sure that they made every single important putt in their career.
Unsurprisingly, Kenyon included Tiger Woods when naming his three greatest putters of all-time in an interview with Upgame Talks.
Interestingly, he also included two players who never won a major.
“If you’re going to put me on the spot, I can only give you a top three. So I would say that you’ve got Tiger Woods in the top three because he was the best putter of the best ball-strikers. He had a good strokes gained average, but he was doing it at the highest level and did he ever miss a putt when he needed to on the last hole of a tournament? It felt like he always made them. So he would be in my top three,” he said.
“I would have David Howell in there. And one of the reasons I would have David Howell in there was, one, I was lucky enough to work with him for a period of time. And despite that, he was still a good putter. I had an insight into how good he was, and that’s why I would put him in there. There was a period of time where he was gaining over one on average per round. We didn’t have strokes gained in Europe at the time, but we were collecting that. And Dave was a phenomenal putter. If you ask all the people he played with, he probably didn’t get the credit he deserved playing on the DP World Tour.
“Then I would say, only because of my living memory of seeing this guy compete, watching him, observing him, I’d go Luke Donald. I think Luke Donald could sit there in the top three. A phenomenal putter.”
Kenyon was obviously reluctant to pick out any players from a much older era. It is fair to say that everyone would probably think of exactly the same shot if they were asked to remember a putt from Jack Nicklaus‘ career.
But Howell and Donald were clearly elite on the greens. No one played more events on the European Tour than Howell. Meanwhile, Donald went 449 holes without a single three-putt back in 2011.
Kenyon went on to suggest some other names he would consider for the list.
“Obviously, you’ve got to have honourable mentions to other players. I think Brad Faxon was an unbelievable putter. And in recent years, Matt Fitzpatrick, if you looked at his stats over a long period of time, is a phenomenal putter. Of late, the likes of Denny McCarthy, Sam Burns are great putters,” he said.
Burns is 10th for strokes gained putting on the PGA Tour right now, just two places ahead of Scheffler. So Scheffler is certainly getting closer to putting himself in the conversation for the best putter in the game currently.