NEWS FROM THE TOUR VANS
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It’s been a long strange trip for Justin Thomas and his search for a reliable Scotty Cameron putter, involving borrowed flatsticks and gas-station meetings among the stops and starts in his process to fix his substandard performance on the greens.
The latest effort in his Scottish foray has settled on a brand new Scotty Cameron Phantom 9.2 Tour prototype that was inspired by his buddy Jordan Spieth.
It has not been a straight road for Thomas as he’s tried to improve on his No. 157 ranking on tour in Strokes Gained: Putting. Before the Memorial and U.S. Open, Thomas drove to meet world No. 1 amateur Gordon Sargent at a gas station to borrow a custom-built Scotty Cameron prototype putter
“I texted Gordon, and he said he wasn’t using it, so I could have it,” Thomas told GolfWRX.com at the Memorial. “I’ve gotten to know Gordon some … so we met up at a gas station to make the transfer.”
At Muirfield Village, Thomas got his own GSS prototype made featuring the same blade shape and unique alignment marks of Sargent’s putter – a single dot nearest the face in front of a line running parallel to the topline. His is stamped with “JT” on the sole to avoid confusion with Sargent’s putter – which Thomas kept as a backup.
But for the opening round of the Genesis Scottish Open, Thomas debuted a Phantom 9.2 Tour Prototype and responded immediately with an 8-under 62 to take a first-round lead at The Renaissance Club.
“Yeah, it came about, as funny as it is, I saw Jordan and Paul Vizanko at Scotty Cameron had made one for Jordan, just to have for him to mess with and something for him to see how he liked it,” Thomas told GolfWRX.com. “I happened to be staying with Jordan a couple times over that stretch when he got it and I picked it up and I thought it looked amazing. I thought it felt great.
“Talking to Paul about it there were a lot of characteristics in the way the putter was built that helped a pretty good amount of my bad tendencies, I would say, in my stroke or they just are able to help that. And so I asked him to make me up one and send me one. Yeah, it feels great you know, performed well its first day and hopefully, it performs well the rest of its days.”
Thomas also joined the wave in switching into Titleist’s new line of GT drivers, deploying the GT2 on his Scottish swing. He was early clubhouse leader at Royal Troon, but like the Scottish Open he was unable to sustain his form and blew up with a 9-over 45 on the front side in the second round.
Former Open champion Collin Morikawa switched into a new set of TaylorMade P7CB irons (5-PW) before finishing T4 at Genesis Scottish Open, filling out a set matching the “Proto” 4-iron that Morikawa has been using.
The move mirrors Morikawa’s change into P7MC short irons before winning the 2021 Open Championship, electing to finetune his irons for better turf interaction on firm links courses.
Morikawa also switched from his usual TaylorMade Qi10 5-wood to a lower-launching 19-degree TaylorMade P790 3-iron to give him an option for something that could roll out more on the fairways at Royal Troon.
Scott Michaux
