Inside putter switch that transformed Scottie Scheffler's 2024 season

Scottie Scheffler’s historic 2024 season was made possible by a memorable change in equipment, one that made an immediate impact and that came from a last-minute phone call before his first victory this year. Scheffler switched to TaylorMade’s Spider mallet putter in March and earned the first of his nine worldwide wins in the club’s debut. He used that same putter in each of his wins this year, including victories at the Masters, THE PLAYERS Championship, Olympics and TOUR Championship.

It was a season that earned Scheffler his third consecutive PGA TOUR Player of the Year Award, making him the first to win three in a row since Tiger Woods (2005-07).

Considering all his success, it’s easy to forget that Scheffler was seeking answers on the greens when the year started. He won twice in 2023, including his first PLAYERS title, and was voted the PGA TOUR Player of the Year on the strength of his incredible consistency (21 top-25s, including 17 top-10s, in 23 starts).

He was unstoppable from tee to green last year, gaining 2.62 strokes per round from tee to green. It was a performance surpassed only by Tiger Woods in 2006 (+2.98) since tracking began in 2004. But it was clear his putting was holding him back. He was searching, but a new putting coach (Phil Kenyon) and putter (TaylorMade Spider Tour X L-Neck) helped him find answers.

He hired Kenyon after the TOUR Championship and put the Spider in the bag at this year’s Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, which he won to end a winless drought that extended almost a year.

The putter, a departure from the blades he’d used for the majority of his career, featured a full sight line on top of the True Path Alignment and a Pure Roll insert.

Scheffler’s experiment starts

Scheffler tried and tested multiple putters last year, starting his search after finishing last in Strokes Gained: Putting at the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday. He hit the ball so well that he finished just one shot out of a playoff despite ranking last on the greens (-8.52).

Scheffler’s journey started at last year’s U.S. Open, where he switched to a new, wider-bodied Scotty Cameron Timeless Tourtype putter with a smooth face compared to his usual gamer.

He played that putter until the end of the regular season, but it was at the first stop of the FedExCup Playoffs in Memphis where the TaylorMade Spider experiment began after Scheffler reached out to TaylorMade tour rep Adrian Rietveld for help.

“He was very adamant about a putter’s feel being a forward CG (center of gravity) putter,” Rietveld said. “We had two putters … The difference between the two putters was the alignment aid on them. … He gravitated towards the one with the white true path full line. I remember walking around with him during the pro-am, honestly, I think he was, must have been 7 or 8 under par and putted amazing with it.”

Scheffler’s TaylorMade Spider TourX “SS Proto” putter that debuted at the FedEx St. Jude Championship was a hybrid between a blade and a mallet. The solid face on the prototype helped move the CG toward the face, mimicking the feel of a blade putter yet offered the benefits of a mallet with a more forgiving head style.

“I had tried a Spider putter with a different weighting in it,” Scheffler said. “A weighting that was more similar to my blade, and I felt like I didn't get the full benefits of the Spider putter with that specific model. And so when it came time to test it again, I asked them for the full deal because I'm like, ‘I just want to give it the full test.’”

Scheffler returned to his usual gamer, a Scotty Cameron Special Select Timeless Tourtype GSS tour prototype, two events later at East Lake. It was the same putter that Scheffler started using right before he earned his first PGA TOUR win at the 2022 WM Phoenix Open. It didn’t lead to victory at East Lake, however, as Scheffler finished 16 shots back despite starting the week with a two-stroke advantage as the FedExCup leader.

Kenyon’s input initiated

Within hours of his heartbreak at East Lake, Scheffler reached out to Phil Kenyon, one of the world’s top putting coaches. A few days later, the pair were working together in Dallas, and the extra set of eyes and expertise helped Rietveld and the team go back to the drawing board with new ideas.

“We probably tested about a dozen putters in Dallas for several weeks,” Kenyon told PGATOUR.COM. “A lot of different testing just to see what difference it makes in terms of his alignment stroke tendencies, so that was always there, and an opportunity to go back to our testing and look at what we did, what he did well, and where we could go if he wanted to make an equipment switch.”

Scheffler returned to competition for the first time since joining up with Kenyon at the 2023 Ryder Cup. Despite an emotional loss for the U.S. Team and Scheffler, there were signs of progression.

“I was trying to fix it in the complete wrong way,” Scheffler said at Marco Simone. “I would lower my hands. But when I lowered my hands, it actually caused the toe of the putter to go higher and higher.”

Scheffler said the fault led to him hitting too many putts off the heel of his putter. That made it hard for him to start his putts on the correct line.

Scheffler switched to a thicker SuperStroke Zenergy Tour 2.0 grip, choking down considerably on it. This helped the putter grip sit more in the palm of his hands and allowed Scheffler to bend over more at address. As a result, he could simply move the putter with the turn of his torso instead of relying on his hands.

Scheffler continued working with Kenyon through the end of 2023, winning the Hero World Challenge at Albany GC in the Bahamas, this time using a Logan Olson blade putter. The team’s pursuit to find the answer on the greens didn’t stop, though.

“It started off at probably six putters. It ended off at, I think 15 putters,” Rietveld explained. “Next, Phil wanted to test … ‘What does Scottie do when he uses a face balanced putter versus a toe hang putter versus a center shafted putter?’

“We messed around a little bit with long lines on the top, and short lines. How does his eyes naturally align with the putter? … The longer the line got, the more Scottie naturally aimed on the correct start line … we're talking about fine margins here, but it was much more tighter to the exact face angle that he needed the start line.”

Scheffler started 2024 with four top-10s in his first five starts. However, he lost strokes on the greens in all but one tournament. On the verge of a three-peat at the WM Phoenix Open, he missed three putts from inside 7 feet on Nos. 13-15 to fall out of contention. Scheffler’s final-round putting performance ranked 63rd among the 73 players who made the cut.

“I put myself in position in Phoenix, and not being able to make the putts late on the back nine on Sunday … I was very frustrated not to be able to get it done,” Scheffler said.

The following week Scheffler finished T10 at The Genesis Invitational despite ranking last in Strokes Gained: Putting. The answer, it turned out, was just a phone call away.

The Spider surprise

Off the back of a disappointing putting performance at Riviera, Scheffler reached back out to Rietveld. He was looking to give the Spider another go.

“He's going full circle, and he's asked me if I can do some more of the putters that he played at the very start (Spider TourX SS Proto putter that Scheffler debuted in Memphis),” Rietveld said. “I still remember it was about 4 o'clock at The Kingdom (TaylorMade’s headquarters) on a Thursday afternoon (prior to the Arnold Palmer Invitational),” Rietveld explained. “… That's a tough game because it's the weekend …. You're talking about trying to get him something there for the next week.”

But it was the final part of that phone call between Rietveld and Scheffler that sticks in the memory.

“Right at the end of the conversation with Scottie, he did say to me, ‘Can you also send me an all bells, all whistles, a pure Spider putter?” Rietveld said. “… I just want one of those, one of the help me putters.

“Within 24 hours, those putters were out the door and an early Saturday morning delivery to Scheffler for him to go to work … The next time I saw him was on Tuesday morning on the putting green at Bay Hill. I was so interested to see what was under the head cover.”

To Rietveld’s surprise the “all bells, all whistle” Spider Tour X L-Neck had made the call up. The L-Neck created an offset to the putter head, similar to that of a blade which Scheffler was used to, plus helped the feel of the putter head release. At 35 ½ inches in length, the TaylorMade team had gone with the True Path with Full Line for a sight line and Pure Roll insert – the same that’s found on one off a shelf in stores.

Compared to his previous “SS Proto” version, this form of the Spider Tour X mallet sees more of a back-weighted build to help raise the MOI (moment of inertia), and improve consistency on putts struck off-center. The Pure Role insert features grooves angled at 45 degrees for optimal forward roll and better overall roll characteristics.

The True Path alignment system matched the white of a golf ball and helped Scheffler move away from lining the ball up itself instead of the putter head.

“He was using a line of the ball to help his alignment because of a certain bias that he would have,” Kenyon said. “When we tested that putter, he could aim it really, really well. The configuration of the club helped him and then getting rid of a line of ball helped even more. That was one of the things at the time that he needed to do.”

The floodgates opened at Bay Hill and records kept breaking. Scheffler won by five shots at the Arnold Palmer Invitational ranking fifth in the field on the greens. It was the first win on a torrid run that saw Scheffler collect six victories before July, the first to win such an amount since Palmer himself, in 1962.

“This Spider putter is really easy for me to line up,” Scheffler said the following week at TPC Sawgrass, where he went on to defend at THE PLAYERS. “I don't have to use the line on the ball. I line the putter up really well, and I line up in the middle of the face, and pretty much as simple as that.”

Scheffler won six times in his first 10 starts with the new putter, claiming the Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard, THE PLAYERS, Masters and RBC Heritage. He added two more wins at Signature Events, the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, and the Travelers Championship. Winning at Memorial was redemption after his performance there a year earlier.

He added the Olympic gold medal to his incredible season before claiming the FedExCup (he also added last week’s Hero World Challenge).

“Normally in an equipment story, there is an element of luck along the way where someone gets a break or something has a good round and the club really sticks,” Rietveld said. “There was no luck in this. It was just relentless, relentless exploring and testing and identifying exactly what works and what doesn't.

“It was a relentless pursuit of getting better.”