Last week, Lucas Glover suggested the PGA Tour ban AimPoint to speed up the pace of play.
“It’s also kinda rude to be up near the hole, stomping around, figuring out where the break is in your feet,” he said. “It needs to be banned. It takes forever.”
Collin Morikawa, however, doesn’t agree with Glover—and took a shot at the former U.S. Open champion in expressing his dissent.
“I have nothing against Lucas, but if we’re banning AimPoint I think we should ban long putters as well,” Morikawa said Tuesday ahead of the Genesis Invitational. “I don’t know. I guess no one has said it, right?”
Glover began using a broomstick putter a few years ago after putting yips plagued him for a decade. He won back-to-back events in August 2023.
On his SiriusXM show, the 45-year-old said “AimPoint, statistically, hasn’t helped anybody make more putts since its inception on the PGA Tour. Statistics have beared that out.”
Morikawa didn’t dispute that AimPoint can sometimes slow down the pace of play, and understands where Glover is coming from.
“AimPoint does take longer if you're not doing it properly, right, if you’re not doing it when other players are reading their putts,” the two-time major champion said. “I think there’s a respect issue. I think some players might get a little bit too close to the hole and I get that. When you get too close to the hole when someone else is putting, yeah, like I don't want my line and my putt to go over someone else’s foot and their marks.
“I mean, are you going to tell other players not to walk around the hole when we’re picking up putts?
But contrary to how Glover feels, Morikawa believes AimPoint has generated success on the putting surface.
“From my perspective, AimPoint has 1,000 percent helped me,” the 28-year-old said. “I listen to the announcers sometimes during play and they say why would you AimPoint this, this and that. It gets a basis of how I read a putt and how I start my lines. It’s just like reading something from behind the hole or behind the ball, that's how I’m getting my general read for that.
“I don’t think people understand how AimPoint works to really say this is right or wrong. Does it slow down play? I think there are some players that maybe do it in the wrong spots.”
Therefore, Morikawa has another suggestion to speed up the pace of play.
“And sometimes, look, I’ll admit it, maybe I can’t get in when I want to so (AimPoint) adds a couple more seconds. But I know that and I’m aware of that. I think players need to be aware if they’re slow or not, right? Like let people know who is slow and do something about it, right?”
There’s no objection to the long putter, though.
“I’m just throwing shade back at my AimPoint guys,” Morikawa said. “I’m protecting my AimPoint guys, right? There’s guys that long putt and have AimPoint. I don’t have any beef. I don't have anything wrong with putting like that, I just—I had to protect my AimPoint guys.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Collin Morikawa Claps Back at Major Champion’s Slow Play Suggestion.
