How Maverick McNealy transformed game to win The RSM Classic

ST. SIMONS ISLAND, Ga. – Maverick McNealy, who made a 5 1/2–foot birdie putt to win for the first time at The RSM Classic on Sunday, estimates he has somewhere around 15 people on his payroll, what with his stats guy, his caddie/kid brother, Scout, plus his swing coach, physio, agent and others.

McNealy, a hockey nut, is a team guy.

“My parents have always treated me and my three brothers like a team,” he said after picking up his first win in his 142nd PGA TOUR start, booking spots in The Sentry, Masters Tournament and PGA Championship next year. “And everything that I remember is family related. I miss playing college golf and playing on a team. I felt like I had more of a team with me this year than at any point in my golf career. That, I think, has been a huge difference maker for me.”

But it hasn’t been just about having a team; it’s been about having the right team. McNealy is newly married; he and wife Maya will celebrate their one-year anniversary on Dec. 6. Scout only started on the bag this fall.

And then there’s Scott Hamilton, a longtime teaching pro in Cartersville, Georgia, who also coaches Chris Kirk, among many others. Hamilton asks new students to send him a video of when they were playing their best, and so he did with McNealy.

This was nearly two years ago, and one thing stood out immediately: McNealy, who had won a men's school record-tying 11 times at Stanford, didn’t look like the same guy.

“I don’t know how it happened, but his swing got so underneath that it was hurting him,” Hamilton said. “His left shoulder shot way up in the air and he put tons of pressure on the shaft, and it would push his clavicle up.

“He went around rubbing his shoulder,” the coach added.

Sure enough, McNealy had to step away from competitive golf last year. Having torn a ligament in his left shoulder, he resolved to treat it with biomechanical analysis, stem-cell treatment, and, most crucially, a new swing.

Although McNealy had been a tireless worker for years – he admitted he had the full-swing yips in 2018 – in a sense his work had just begun.

“When I started working with him, he couldn’t even take a divot,” Hamilton said. “He might hit it fat or flare it way up in the air. I knew if we could just get the ball-striking figured out, his short game was going to make him tough to beat.”

The coach had him stand taller, moving the plane steeper and more on top of the ball. The goal was to eliminate the shoulder pain but also the erratic shots.

McNealy’s natural shot shape became a fade, and by getting more on top of the ball he was able to better control his trajectory – a vital skill in the wind.

“He sent some videos from Bermuda, because it was pumpin’ there,” Hamilton said. “And he said, ‘I can hit some shots I haven’t seen in a long time.’”

McNealy’s winning putt Sunday was made possible, in part, by the 18th-hole bogeys of amateur Luke Clanton and two-time TOUR winner Nico Echavarria two groups ahead. That opened the door for McNealy, whose last full swing, a 6-iron from 185 yards that stopped 5 feet, 5 inches away, was a testament to his work with Hamilton.

“The exciting part for me is that the iron play has been trending very strongly the last four to six weeks especially, but really the last couple months,” he said. “That was for sure the missing piece that was holding me back from winning.

“I moved mountains in terms of swinging right to swinging left during my time off,” he added after ranking sixth in Strokes Gained: Approach the Green for the week.

For a while, McNealy looked as if he would fall short. He botched a 4-foot birdie putt at the par-5 15th hole. Caddie/little brother Scout, undeterred, stepped in with a joke to lighten the mood as McNealy lined up another birdie putt on No.17. He missed.

Scout is still relatively new on the bag, and the plan was that he was just going to work the FedExCup Fall and move on with his life. McNealy convinced him to stay on.

“We're having some of the most fun ever,” McNealy said.

The RSM Classic is the last tournament of the season, and thus the last chance for players to find their way into the top 125 in the FedExCup to keep their PGA TOUR cards. It’s also a cutoff point for the all-important Aon Next 10 (Nos. 51-60), and entry into two early-season Signature Events.

McNealy started the week at 52nd in the FedExCup Fall, which meant he had not only locked up his card for next season, but he also was pretty much set to finish in the Aon Next 10 and qualify for the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and The Genesis Invitational. He and Scout joked that the best he could finish was 51st, so that became their rallying cry: Let’s do it. Let’s get to 51st.

McNealy, PGA TOUR winner, did a lot more than that.