NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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Greens on the West Coast swing have always presented challenges to PGA Tour pros, and the 2025 run has seen a lot of shakeups regarding flat sticks in players’ bags.
Jordan Spieth showed up at the WM Phoenix Open with a T.P. Mills Trad II blade putter instead of his familiar Scotty Cameron 009.
“I’m just kind of messing with some – I’ve got a few options, just trying to mess a little with how it sits on the ground, the draft on the bottom of the putter, see if I can get it to where it sets aligning a little better and off the ball is a little bit smoother,” Spieth said after carding a first-round 68 at TPC Scottsdale en route to T4 that marked his best finish since T6 in Phoenix last year. “I may use a few options this week. I may stick with the one I did today. We'll see.
“I used a mallet-style putter in 2017 and then I threatened last year when I was – but I never ended up using a different putter, but I was trying out a few different options, different heads and stuff like that. I’m just trying to figure out what helps me stroke it the best, and I’ll use that one.”
Tom Kim broke out a brand new Scotty Cameron Studio Style Newport 2 in his energetic TGL debut when he helped lift Tiger Woods’ Jupiter Links team to its first victory in January. He immediately took the new blade (and its thinner grip) with him across the country to Pebble Beach, where he finished T7 out of the penultimate group on Sunday.
Kim had veered away from blades – which he used in all three of his PGA Tour victories – to mallet putters. But the new Scotty rekindled some spark in the demonstrative Korean, as he ranked ninth in strokes gained putting at Pebble.
“Just back to a blade, something that I’ve putted well with,” Kim said. “I think mallet, blade, they both have their positives and they both have their negatives. I just felt like I needed something a little bit more consistent and something that I’ve won with. It’s not exactly the same blade that I’ve been using, it’s a little different.”
The new Studio Style putters feature a new chain-link milled face insert made with studio carbon steel (SCS) for a softer feel. Kim’s Newport 2 has two white lines painted on top of the putter head – one parallel to the face and a shorter line perpendicular and pointing toward the target. The alignment lines mimic something Kim saw on the putter of PGA Tour rookie Tim Widing and helped him after he copied his friend Scottie Scheffler and stopped using the line on his golf ball to line up putts.
“I think transitioning from the mallet – some of my lines, I started to really like a different type of line than I used to,” he said. “Just kind of little adjustments. And obviously the new face that they came out with is really nice, so it’s been working well so far.”
Sharing some of the Sunday threesome spotlight in contention with Kim was another TGL standout, Justin Rose. Rose tied for third at Pebble after making a putter switch of his own, returning to his Scotty Cameron T-5 mallet after using an Axis-1 prototype putter he helped design in the first of two stops this winter at Torrey Pines. Rose’s familiarity with the putter helped him stay in the hunt on Pebble greens that were playing slow because of the weather forecast.
“I think they were a bit scared about the wind, I don’t think the wind materialized maybe as much they could have. I think they backed off the greens a little too much, they got very pudding like, so that made it challenging to hole putts,” Rose said. “You had to adjust to it, really. Sometimes for a tour pro, you want to just read it and stroke it, where I feel like you had to make a bit of a conscious effort to get it to the hole.”
Adam Scott, yet another TGL star, made a strong Sunday run with a 64 at Pebble to finish T22 after switching to a new L.A.B. Oz.1 putter before this final round. He was second, gaining 3.3 strokes to the field in the final round after ranking 78th (out of 80), 46th and 49th in strokes gained putting the first three rounds.
Robert MacIntyre sported a new putter as well at Pebble, one he “stole” out of the bag of a Scotty Cameron European tour rep in the Middle East and brought with him to the U.S. There was no hiding the booty, as the left-handed Scotty Cameron T5.5 Prototype in a black metal finish and Tour-style welded small-slant neck came equipped with a bright pink grip.
“I’d been struggling a little bit, and yeah, he was the only left-handed putter in the Middle East, and yeah, I've stolen it,” said MacIntyre, who finished T6 in the WM Phoenix Open ranking 11th in strokes gained putting despite ranking 137th on the season in that category.
Scott Michaux