Collin Morikawa has made a late change to his bag for this week’s Masters that he hopes will give him a shot at contending for the Green Jacket.
Perhaps inspired by the form of Scottie Scheffler, Morikawa has ditched his TaylorMade Logan Olson blade prototype in favour of a Spider Tour X with an L-neck hosel and a “T” sight line.
The two-time Major winner has been described as “a tried and true blade guy” by TaylorMade in the past so him adding one of the best mallet putters to his setup represents quite a departure.
However, looking at his form on the greens, it should perhaps come as no surprise.
For the 2024 season, Morikawa ranks 164th on the PGA Tour for Strokes Gained: Putting, losing more than half a shot per round on average to the field.
If you couple that with his long game, which has regressed since his 2021 Open win, it’s little wonder his form coming into the first men’s Major is sketchy.
The 27-year-old missed the cut at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and backed that up with a T45 finish at the Players Championship and a T75 at last week’s Valero Texas Open.
He’ll be hoping he can find the same sort of immediate success with the new flat stick as Scheffler did.
The World No. 1 put the TaylorMade Spider Tour X mallet in his bag ahead of the Arnold Palmer Invitational after struggling on the greens for the majority of last year with his Scotty Cameron blade.
It was the only part of his game stopping him from completely dominating but he seems to have turned a corner since opting for a more forgiving and stable style.
He won at Bay Hill and followed that up by defending his Players Championship crown before he missed out on a playoff at the Texas Children’s Houston Open by a shot.
Notably, he gained shots on the field on the greens in all three events, something Morikawa will be hoping to emulate when the gun goes off at Augusta National.
Rory McIlroy now infamously suggested Scheffler should turn to a mallet, which he then did and won the Arnold Palmer Invitational by five strokes. “I’m not going to give him any more advice, that’s for sure,” the Northern Irishman joked.
