Gear: TaylorMade Spider S putters
Price: $349.99 each with KBS Stepless Stability shaft and Super Stroke Pistol GTR 1.0 grip
Specs: Aluminum-bodied putters with tungsten weights and grooved face insert.
Available: Feb. 14
The original TaylorMade Spider debuted in 2008, and a better name for it might have been Tarantula because it was massive. Its size and extreme perimeter weighting made it stable on off-center hits. Still, many players couldn’t get past its looks.
Refinements and tinkering continued for years, but when Jason Day started using a black, custom-made Spider Mini, lightning struck. The Australian won the PGA Championship with it and the following season became the first golfer to finish a PGA Tour season with a strokes gained putting average over 1. His 1.13 average meant Day gained more than a full-shot advantage over the field each round based on the quality of his putting.
Eventually, Day switched into a red Spider Tour, which was a retail version of the putter he’d been using. Then Jon Rahm, Dustin Johnson, Rory McIlroy and plenty of other pros started tinkering with Spider putters. In 2019, TaylorMade released a more refined version, the Spider X, which McIlroy and Rahm quickly put in their bags.
The newest version is the Spider S, and TaylorMade said that while it may look more refined, the Spider S is the most stable Spider putter yet.
The key to making the smaller head play like a big putter is the multi-material construction. The body is made from 6061 aluminum, which is very light. That allowed TaylorMade designers to shift much of the head’s overall weight into a tungsten bar in the back of the head. There are also 48 grams of tungsten split between two weights behind the leading edge in the heel and toe area.
Concentrating so much weight in those areas increases the moment of inertia and helps the Spider S resist twisting on off-center hits. It also helps the ball roll out nearly as far on putts hit toward the heel and toe, for enhanced distance control.
To further enhance performance, TaylorMade updated the grooved True Roll face insert. The grooves still point downward at a 45-degree angle to help the insert grab the ball and encourage it to start rolling instead of skidding after impact, but the insert itself is slightly thicker. It gives the Spider S a softer feel and sound.
The Spider S putter is face-balanced, so it is ideally suited for golfers who have a straight-back, straight-through putting stroke, and it is available in both navy and chalk white. Both color options feature a three-stripe alignment system on the top to help golfers aim the face more easily.