Every golfer has a breaking point, and Scottie Scheffler reached his after shooting 68-66-66-66 at the WM Phoenix and finishing tied for third. It was a solid result, but statistically, he was among the worst putters to make the cut. After the West Coast Swing, Scheffler was still the No. 1 player in the world, he had earned four top-10 finishes in five PGA Tour starts, but he had failed to win a tournament.
Before the start of the 2024 Arnold Palmer Invitational at the Bay Hill Club and Lodge, Scheffler, who had been using a heel-toe weighted blade putter, switched to a TaylorMade Spider Tour X with a unique L-shaped hosel. The rest of the PGA Tour now wishes he hadn’t because Scheffler won that week, and then won again the following week at the Players Championship. And again, a few weeks later, at the Masters.
The gunmetal-finished TaylorMade Spider putters have an aluminum wireframe body and TaylorMade’s True Path alignment system on the top, comprising a white area with a single black line extending from the topline and forks in the back. The white is designed to grab your eyes’ attention and make it easier to focus on your putt’s intended path. There is also a vibration-dampening system behind the leading edge in the sole.
Scheffler’s Spider Tour X L-Neck has a hosel that creates about 20 degrees of toe hang. It’s subtle, but for golfers like Scheffler, who make a slightly arced putting stroke, the balance is ideal.
Like other Spider Tour putters, it has a Pure Roll insert made with Surlyn that has a series of grooves that point down at a 45-degree angle. The grooves grab the back of the ball at impact and encourage a forward roll instead of skidding and bouncing.
Scheffler’s putter has 3 degrees of loft, a 72-degree lie angle and 35.5-inches long.
In July, after Scheffler won more events with his Spider Tour L-Neck, TaylorMade started selling it to the public.
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How is Scottie Scheffler’s TaylorMade Spider Tour X L-Neck putter made?
This video created by TaylorMade shows the step-by-step process of creating Scottie Scheffler’s Spider Tour X L-Neck putter.
How much did Scottie Scheffler’s putting improve in 2024?
The best way to judge how well a PGA Tour player is putting is to look at his Strokes Gained: Putting average. This statistic, which can be measured within tournaments and over a season, reveals how much of an advantage or disadvantage a golfer is getting over the average player based exclusively on the quality of his putter, measured in fractions of a stroke.
The PGA Tour leader in Strokes Gained: Putting in 2024 was Justin Suh, with an average of 0.742. That means over the course of an 18-hole round, Suh’s putting earned a 0.742-shot edge on the field’s average score. On the flip side, Justin Thomas struggled on the greens last season and finished with an average of -0.499, which ranked 153rd and meant that Thomas was losing about a half-shot to the field average due to his poor putting.
Scottie Scheffler’s driving, iron player and short game are so good that he is almost always in contention at PGA Tour events. He still has an off-week on the greens from time to time, but as the chart below shows, his Strokes Gained: Putting average and his consistency improved after he put the TaylorMade Spider Tour X L-Neck in his bag at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. (The number in parenthesis is his finishing position at the tournament.)
How does Scottie Scheffler’s 2024 putting compare to previous seasons?
Scottie Scheffler has never been among the elite putters on the PGA Tour, and in 2022 he putted well, but his performance on the greens has never matched the quality of his driving, iron play or short game.
As the chart below shoes, Scottie Scheffler’s Strokes Gained: Putting average in 2023 was among the worst on the PGA Tour, but he rebounded in 2024 to finished ranked 69th after using his TaylorMade Spider Tour L-Neck for most of the season.
Scheffler was asked before the start of the Players Championship why he changed to a mallet putter, and this was his answer:
“So I had tried a Spider during the playoffs last year. It was a little bit of a different type of Spider than the one I used last week [the Spider X Tour L-Neck]. At times last year I struggled lining the ball up in the middle of the face, so I lined the ball up on the toe sometimes, and I struggled with a tiny bit of a heel strike, and that was just — you know, just became kind of my miss. Like, if I was fighting a duck hook off the tee, I was fighting a little bit of a heel miss with the putter. This Spider putter is really easy for me to line up. 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. Kind of gives me just a really good visual.”
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