The 9-year-old putter that helped Keegan Bradley transform his putting

Keegan Bradley has been an elite ball striker throughout his career, consistently cracking the top-10 in key long-game stats. In his 2020-21 PGA TOUR season, for example, Bradley ranked fourth in strokes gained: approach the green and fifth in total driving.

Historically, however, his putting stats have paled in comparison. For seven straight seasons, ranging from 2014 to 2021, Bradley didn’t finish inside the top 128 in strokes gained: putting. In his worst putting years, he finished 185th and 186th in the SG: putting category during his 2019-2020 and 2020-2021 seasons, respectively.

Bradley, who won the 2011 PGA Championship using a belly putter that he anchored to his midsection, was among the list of players most affected by the 2016 anchoring ban. Forced to switch styles in the middle of his career, Bradley was left to adopt a different, legal technique.

Since then, Bradley has rifled through numerous putter and grip styles, mostly opting for Odyssey mallets with armlock or wrist-lock grips. In September 2021, though, around the same time he started working with renowned putting coach Phil Kenyon, Bradley began experimenting with an Odyssey Versa Jailbird putter that was released to the public in 2014.

The Jailbird putter design, which Rickie Fowler also currently uses, is an oversized mallet that has contrasting white-and-black visual alignment technology, and the head is built for extra forgiveness to help golfers start the ball on their intended line more consistently. The combination of Kenyon’s coaching and a new putter has helped Bradley turn his weakness into a strength.

Bradley broke a four-year winless drought at the 2022 ZOZO Championship, bringing his career PGA TOUR win count to five, and he finished the 2021-22 PGA TOUR season ranked 88th in Strokes Gained: putting. It was the first time he cracked the top-100 in the stat category since 2013-14, when he finished 47th.

So far in the 2022-23 season, Bradley is ranked 58th in SG: putting, and he finds himself in 4th position on the FedExCup Playoff rankings.

Last week, ahead of the 2023 World Golf Championships-Dell Technologies Match Play, GolfWRX.com spoke with Joe Toulon, a former Odyssey putter rep and current Callaway PGA TOUR Manager, who has worked with Bradley for years on his putter fitting needs.

Toulon helped to shed light on what Bradley likes so much about his Odyssey Versa Jailbird putter, and why Kenyon’s coaching has been so impactful.

“Keegan first started experimenting with his current style of putter in September of 2021,” Toulon told GolfWRX. “It’s a slightly longer putter (about 38.75 inches to the End of Grip), but he uses it in a similar fashion as Alex Noren and Billy Horschel. He goes left hand low but has the fingers on his right hand in between his left forearm and grip. I think, originally, he was looking for something that gave him a similar feel to the Sabertooth belly putter he won a major with. He ended up liking the Versa Jailbird head, and the contrasting black/white cues gave him better face angle awareness. Keegan has obviously had a lot of success with Odyssey mallets and this is another example of that.”

“I think one of the main reasons the Jailbird and his technique has worked so well for him is because of the work he does with Phil Kenyon. Keegan started working with Phil around the same time he switched into the Versa Jailbird and his putting has improved tremendously. Keegan ranked 185th in strokes gained: putting in 2020. He currently ranks 58th. Phil has long been a proponent of Versa technology and what it can do for golfers. Phil and Keegan have put in countless hours on the putting green and his improvement is an example of what can happen when you couple the right putter with the right instructor.”

Bradley’s 38.75-inch putter build comes with a double-bend shaft, four degrees of loft, a 70-degree lie angle, 655 grams of overall weight, and a SuperStroke Traxion Wrist Lock grip.