NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
BROUGHT TO YOU BY GOLF PRIDE, THE #1 GRIP ON TOUR
Last month, when Ben Griffin joined Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy as the only three-time winners on the PGA Tour in 2025, a milestone in putting was reached.
Griffin had been the highest-ranked player on the PGA Tour (19th) in strokes gained putting who still used a blade putter before he showed up in Mexico for the World Wide Technology Championship. That didn’t stop Griffin from following the trend of switching to a mallet-style putter in Mexico.
Using a TaylorMade Spider Tour X similar to the ones used by Scheffler, McIlroy, Tommy Fleetwood and Robert MacIntyre, Griffin won in Mexico and climbed into the top 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking for the first time. Every one of the current top 10 players uses a mallet-style putter, most of them switching out of blades in the last few years and immediately showing improvement in the strokes gained putting category.
Griffin said his Spider putter is in the bag to stay, replacing the Scotty Cameron Concept 2 Tour Prototype he used in winning the Zurich Classic team event with Andrew Novak and the Charles Schwab Challenge earlier in the season. It was curiosity that fueled his change.
“Honestly … I actually looked a lot at the stats this year,” Griffin explained in Mexico. “I was [No.] 19 in strokes gained putting, and I believe I was the best blade putter on tour at 19. And all these guys ahead of me switched from blades to mallets. It was just something I thought about, what would happen if I used a mallet? And I felt like this was a good week for me to test it out. … I didn’t have much to lose, so it was a really great week for me to be able to experiment a little bit.
“This is something I probably wouldn’t have done if it was the start of next season, so I used it as kind of an opportunity to see what would happen if I tried a mallet putter out.
“I have a little putting mat that I’ve been practicing on, honestly, a lot, and I would mess around with all the different putters that I have. I probably have 15 putters … I was messing around with the Spider putter. It felt really good up there and I brought it out to the course, so on Saturday and Sunday before flying here, played some good rounds and said why not, see what happens. Sure enough, it worked.”
Mallets have worked out well for a lot of players this season. In 46 events this season, 34 of them were won by players using mallet putters versus 12 by players using blades, according to the PGA Tour. The last winner to use a blade was Kurt Kitayama sporting a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 Tour Prototype to claim the 3M Open in July.
It’s not all bad news for blade putters. Currently, world No. 16 Ludvig Åberg is the highest ranked player who regularly uses a blade (Odyssey White Hot Versa #1), and Harry Hall waves the blade banner on tour with his Odyssey O-Works 1W putter. Hall ranked third in strokes gained putting in 2025 and atop the list in every other putting stat (total putting, putting average and putts per round).
While world No. 10 Justin Rose has been using some kind of mallet putter since 2016, it was McIlroy who really started the top-end trend in 2022 when he made the switch to a TaylorMade Spider mallet. McIlroy famously suggested Scheffler would benefit from a switch to a mallet early in 2024, and after Scheffler made the move to a TaylorMade Spider Tour X at Bay Hill a few weeks later, he became a dominant force atop the world ranking.
Fleetwood joined the Spider Tour X train in 2025, and like the others realized immediate dividends in strokes gained on the green. According to PGA Tour stats, Scheffler’s strokes gained putting improved from 122nd in 2023 to 77th in 2024 after the switch. McIlroy improved from 66th in 2021 to 16th in 2022 after the change. Fleetwood vaulted from 92nd in 2024 to 20th in 2025 en route to winning the FedEx Cup. Likewise, other top-10 players Russell Henley (120 to 39 with a Scotty Cameron Phantom 5 X prototype), J.J. Spaun (149 to 108 using a L.A.B. DF3) and Justin Thomas (174 to 28 sporting a Scotty Cameron Phantom T-5 prototype) each saw substantial improvement year over year after making the switch to mallets.
Griffin has less room for improvement on the greens since he already ranked inside the top 20 on tour in 2025, but so far his decision seems worth a shot to see if he can push his breakthrough season to another level in 2026.
Scott Michaux