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NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
BROUGHT TO YOU BY GOLF PRIDE, THE #1 GRIP ON TOUR
A putter change had Rory McIlroy looking more like his younger self last week at the Olympic golf competition.
McIlroy used a Scotty Cameron 009M putter at Kasumagaseki Country Club, reverting to a similar style of flatstick he wielded during his first two major championship wins. The Ulsterman had long ago used a Scotty Cameron Studio Select Newport GSS Prototype at the 2011 U.S. Open and 2012 PGA Championship, but recent years saw him go to a mallet-style TaylorMade Spider X.
After ranking No. 24 in strokes gained putting in 2019, McIlroy fell to No. 122 a year ago and is No. 86 this season. He tried a Spider X Hydroblast putter at the Open Championship before deciding to go in a completely different direction with the 009M.
The new putter had been placed into his locker at the 2016 PGA Championship by Scotty Cameron himself, but McIlroy didn’t fiddle around with it until the pandemic.
“I think I sort of want to get back to being as athletic and instinctive as possible and I feel like that style of putter, that blade, it sort of helps me do that,” McIlroy said. “It makes me become very target oriented, at the hole and having my focus be out there, instead of in here (looking down).”
On the topic of great ballstrikers hoping to gain momentum on the greens, Tony Finau has been in the lab trying to find a putter that works for him.
Finau is known for setting up to putts with a lot of forward press, so the goal was to find a putter that would allow him to keep his hands more neutral while maintaining the same feeling of a forward press. He landed on a Ping Anser 2D with extra offset in the hosel. The putter is also 2 degrees flatter than his typical setup.
Finau ranks 115th in strokes gained putting this season, but he putted well during the 3M Open in Minnesota, finishing the tournament at No. 10.
The winner of that 3M Open was Cameron Champ, a player who has found success going to a shorter driver. At the end of 2019, Champ went to a 44.25-inch driver, shorter than the standard 45-inch driver, and felt he could gain more control with low-cut fairway finders. A brief experiment with a 45-inch driver last year didn’t help, so he went back to shorter Ping G425 LST driver earlier this year. He is still averaging more than 317 yards off the tee, ranking 10th in driving distance.
Matthew Wolff put TaylorMade’s new MG3 wedges (50, 56 and 60 degrees) into play last month. The wedge offers a cleaner look than other iterations before it and has a raw finish face.
Titleist has recorded 30 PGA Tour wins this season, while Odyssey has led the putter usage charts in each major this year.
Sean Fairholm