NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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To call 2025 a season of change for Collin Morikawa would be an understatement. The world No. 8 hopes one more adjustment to his arsenal will pay dividends for the upcoming Ryder Cup.
During Team USA’s unofficial tune-up at the Procore Championship in Napa, California, Morikawa auditioned yet another new putter – a custom center-shafted TaylorMade Spider Tour V.
“I got straight to work the Monday right after [the Tour Championship],” Morikawa said ahead of the Procore. “I’m really trying to figure out these irons and it’s crazy to say, but … the putting as well. I’ve got a new putter in the bag this week, which I did a lot of work [with] that Monday right after the Tour Championship.
“Obviously, you need to make the putts, but that’s just something I’ve been fighting over the past few years is just there’s a difference of missing it 20 feet left and 20 feet right,” Morikawa said. “It’s the same number no matter what, you know, strokes gained and stuff, but I want to know where my misses are going. That’s what I’ve been working on really, really hard and it’s been really good work, just got to keep getting where I want to be in a couple weeks. But everything’s feeling great so far, heading into this week at least.”
The musical chairs with putters has been ongoing for Morikawa in 2025, ranging from his usual TaylorMade TP Soto and Logan Olson 1.0 Round blades to Spider Tour V and custom prototype mallets.
While Morikawa's newest Spider Tour V isn’t “zero-torque” like the trendy L.A.B. Golf putters, the center-shaft benefits include more evenly balanced weight across the face, easier alignment and reduced arc and putter rotation.
Considering Morikawa’s putting ranked 55th of the 72 players who made the cut in Napa, there’s no telling what putter he’ll produce on the relatively flat greens this week at Bethpage Black. He ranked 141st on the PGA Tour in strokes gained putting in 2025 (-0.313). He needs to do better than that at Bethpage to help Team USA.
Across the pond at the BMW PGA Championship, Adam Scott showed up with a very surprising piece of equipment in his bag – a conventional-length putter.
Scott became the first player to win the Masters using a long putter (49-inch Scotty Cameron Futura X prototype) in 2013 and stuck with various broomsticks even after the anchoring ban went into effect. He was one of the first players to use a L.A.B. Golf putter in 2019.
Scott’s form with the putter tapered off to 111th in strokes gained putting in 2025, however, and he failed to qualify for the FedEx Cup playoffs.
Scott showed up at Wentworth with a standard-length L.A.B. Golf OZ.1i HS (heel-shafted) putter that he helped design, and used it in the first round. By the second round he had switched back to his longer L.A.B. Golf Mezz.1 Max putter with a split grip. Yet by the final round he appeared to be trying a conventional length L.A.B. center-shafted DF3 model. He left with a T38 finish in the DP World Tour’s flagship event and your guess may be as good as his about what comes next.
Scott Michaux