NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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Winless since August 2022, Patrick Cantlay opted to make a rare upgrade in his irons.
Ahead of the Masters, Cantlay put a set of Ping Blueprint S irons in play, replacing his trusty Titleist 718 AP2 irons with which he won seven of his eight career PGA Tour titles, from the 2019 Memorial to the 2022 BMW Championship.
Citing diminishing backup sets and a desire to upgrade, Cantlay reportedly began testing new irons at the end of 2023 and settled on the Blueprint S that were built to match the measurement specifications of his former Titleist irons. He put the Pings in play for his T22 finish at the Masters and his tie for third at the RBC Heritage.
Ping tour rep Spencer Rothluebber told GolfWRX.com that Cantlay continued dialing in the details through the RBC Heritage.
“He’s very particular visually,” Rothluebber said. “We worked a lot on lie angles, and making sure the lofts on his irons were right. But it’s also everything from top rail to leading edge. The numbers have to be there [spin and distance] for him, but it has to look right, too.”
Change of a different sort paid off for tour veteran Billy Horschel, who snapped his own two-year victory drought with a dramatic Sunday rally to win the Corales Puntacana Championship. Specifically, Horschel changed back to the putter with which he’d last won, at the 2022 Memorial: the Ping Sigma 2 Tyne 4.
Horschel went through some rough patches in the past year, including a painful opening-round 84 in his title defense at the Memorial. Still searching for answers in the first months of 2024, Horschel put his old putter back in the bag at the Players Championship. He finished T12 at Innisbrook and T7 in Houston with positive strokes gained putting in both and then broke through with a win in the Dominican Republic after firing a Sunday 63.
“It’s been heating up,” Horschel said in his champion’s press conference. “It was on the sidelines for a little while. It had to get warmed back up again.
“I’ve been seeing signs of having unbelievable putting weeks – not just rounds, weeks. And this is one of those weeks where I just had a great putting week. I felt like I was really comfortable on the greens. I read them well. I had the speed very down where I didn’t have to think about how hard to hit them. I could just get in there and focus on my line and hit the putt.
“At the end of the day, listen, if I’m not making the putts, I’m not standing here.”
Horschel said recently he switched in March from the blade Ping PLD Anser he used through 2023 back to his reliable mallet putter because he was missing too many opportunities inside 10 and 15 feet.
“You get a little more forgiveness with the mallet putter,” Horschel said. “I just felt like it was time to probably make a switch back and hopefully be a little more consistent.
“I think just switching back to a putter you’ve had success with, you know. You’ve made putts with it; you know how it feels; you know how it looks. And so I think it’s just the comfort quality of having that putter and knowing you’ve made putts with it and have been successful with it.”
Scott Michaux