Ryan Gerard’s career transformation can be traced back to a single shot—one he didn’t even hit. It all unfolded at the 2025 Houston Open, and the following weekend in Texas, he secured his first runner-up finish on the PGA Tour. A few months later, he won his maiden Tour title. He then used his Scottie Scheffler learnings in early 2026 to overcome tough courses.

“A lot of guys, when they take speed off a golf club, the ball flight comes down,” Gerard told Golf Channel. “Scottie hits this shot with this smooth knockdown swing, but he launches it higher, spins it more, and it bridges the gap between two full numbers. I’ve been obsessed with this shot since I played with him the final round of Houston last year, and I’ve gone about learning how to hit it.”

Analysts and fellow pros have described #1 Scottie Scheffler‘s approach play as “near-surgical,” noting his ability to consistently hit greens from 150–200 yards. He currently leads the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained: Total. But how that one round changed Gerard’s performance overnight was inspiring.

Before the 2025 Houston Open, his best finish was a modest tie for fifteenth at the Farmers Open. Then everything changed when he watched Scheffler dominate the final round in Texas and finish second. Gerard copied the high-launch knockdown and immediately secured a ninth-place finish with a 14-under score, becoming his best finish then. Ryan has only progressed since.

One week later, at the Valero Texas Open, he finished second, and then came the 2025 Barracuda Championship, when Gerard finished with 47 points under the tournament’s unique Modified Stableford scoring system. The most interesting part was his final round performance, as he made two crucial eagles on the 3rd and 11th holes.

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Then in 2026, he opened the season with back-to-back runners-up at the Sony Open and the American Express. The showing at PGA West and La Quinta Country Club was especially encouraging, as Gerard needed to channel his inner-Scottie to excel on firm, baked-out greens in dome-like conditions.

He also nearly defeated Scottie Scheffler at the American Express by using his ‘Scheffler-inspired’ tools. Gerard fired a brilliant 64 on Saturday to keep the pressure on. But in the end, he fell just four shots short, finishing in second place as #1 secured his 20th PGA Tour win with a 27-under total.

However, Gerard’s technique is not perfectly identical to the original version Scheffler used. Gerard puts the ball slightly more forward in his stance and chokes down on the grip. He describes a feeling of slowing down his hands through the ball but speeding up after it. This moves the ball to fly higher and softer, even if it lacks Scottie’s extreme spin.

Except for this one or two incidents, he feels very confident about it, as he said, “I think it’s going to serve me well at Players, Augusta, the PGA, and the U.S. Open.”

Improving his iron play was just one part of a bigger battle for Ryan Gerard

Gerard has spent years fighting critics who say his golf swing looks very strange and imperfect. Some people even told him that his downswing looks like Daniel Berger and Jon Rahm had an aneurysm during the downswing. Gerard ignores these mean comments and tackles every critic head-on with a very big smile, as he knows that looking different does not matter as long as the ball goes straight.

And Gerard’s move is certainly unique because he uses a very short backswing that stops quite early. The club sits in a flat position at the top, while his hands stay very low. It does not look like the perfect swing you see from other pros on the Tour.

It’s different, for sure, but Carl Lohren, Gerard’s former longtime instructor, gets very upset when people call the move weird. The eighty-eight-year-old coach believes this action is actually the most correct way to play golf. Lohren saw this same move when he watched the legendary Ben Hogan in 1964.

As the veteran coach noted, “For the last 30 years, all these players have been shaped by a computer. Ryan’s swing is only different because I never changed his natural swing; I just made it fundamentally sound. If you go back and look at Sam Snead, or Ben Hogan, or Jack Nicklaus, or Arnold Palmer, you could say the same thing about all those guys… So, when you say Ryan’s swing is unorthodox, it’s only unorthodox because it’s orthodox. It’s his swing.”