Tommy Fleetwood has made a putter change for the RBC Heritage. That's despite a reasonable week on the famously undulating greens of Augusta National during last week's Masters, where, on his way to finishing T21, he averaged 1.57 putts per green in regulation.
For context, that’s 12th on the overall list, just four places lower than winner Rory McIlroy. However, for this week’s tournament, Fleetwood is using a new putter. Per TaylorMade’s official website, it came about after a putting session the day after The Masters.
According to TaylorMade, the Englishman tested a prototype zero-torque Spider and a Spider Tour Black, in a bid to correct a marginally left aim and closed face at impact.
Fleetwood liked what the putters gave him – namely, the ability to place his hands lower and allow the face to open naturally and arc back into his stroke.
The difference was the ZT’s small milling marks on the crown by the face, which help with alignment. Fleetwood, who is still looking for his maiden PGA Tour win, wanted a similar feature, but on a Spider-style putter. TaylorMade putter rep James Holley then used a ruler and a sharpie to add the same lines to Fleetwood’s Spider Tour.
The results were immediate. In the first round of the PGA Tour’s signature event, Fleetwood gained 0.711 strokes on the putting surfaces to leave him T10 after a four-under 67.
Fleetwood’s switch from a blade putter to a mallet putter follows a recent trend. For a long time, blade putters were the go-to flat stick for many of the world’s top PGA Tour pros, and there’s no denying some of the results since they made the change.
The most high-profile of recent times was arguably Scottie Scheffler, who ranked 162nd in Strokes Gained putting with a -0.301 average in the 2022/23 season while largely using his Scotty Cameron Newport 2 blade. Those struggles continued into the 2024 season, until the Genesis Invitational, when Rory McIlroy joined the CBS telecast at Riviera Country Club.
There, he suggested Scheffler might benefit from a switch to a mallet putter, saying: “For me, going to a mallet was a big change. I really persisted with the blade putter for a long time, but I just feel like your stroke has to be so perfect to start the ball on line, where the mallet just gives you a little bit more margin for error.”
Soon after, Scheffler made the switch and the rest is history, with the American going on to largely dominate for the rest of the year. As for McIlroy, he used a torched, mallet-style TaylorMade Spider Tour X putter at Augusta National. Despite a few wobbles, he largely put previous putting issues to one side to claim his maiden Green Jacket.
