The top two players in the Official World Golf Ranking have shown up in Memphis wielding new flatsticks.
According to photos posted by Golf Digest’s Luke Kerr-Dineen, both world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler and No. 3 Rory McIlroy were spotted Tuesday at TPC Southwind, site of this week’s playoff-opening FedEx St. Jude Championship, practicing with different putters than their previous starts.
McIlroy, who ranked No. 84 on Tour in strokes gained putting, was rolling putts in with a Scotty Cameron Phantom X T5.5 Tour Prototype mallet. For much of the past several seasons, including The Open a few weeks ago, McIlroy has used a TaylorMade Spider X, though he also dabbled with a Scotty Cameron Newport GSS blade putter earlier this year.
New flat stick for Rory this week 👀 pic.twitter.com/dB9OQpg4Fc
— LKD (@LukeKerrDineen) August 8, 2023
Scheffler, the Tour’s leader in strokes gained off the tee and approach but sitting No. 135 in putting, was experimenting with several putters, per Golf.com’s Jonathan Wall, including three different TaylorMade Spider mallets and a Scotty Cameron Newport blade. Scheffler has switched putters several times this season, including most recently at the U.S. Open when he put a Scotty Cameron Timeless Tourtype GSS blade in the bag.
Potential putter change in the works? Scottie Scheffler’s doing some head-to-head testing with several TaylorMade Spiders and a Scotty Cameron Newport. pic.twitter.com/uypUEEDaVY
— Jonathan Wall (@jonathanrwall) August 8, 2023
But Scheffler has continually shrugged off his putting statistics, recently calling his struggles on the greens more of a narrative created by the media.
“I think that most of what has to happen is something has to be created into a story,” Scheffler said during The Open. “For a while it didn’t really seem like there was much of a story behind the way I play golf; I think I was viewed as probably a touch boring and didn’t really show much emotion and whatever else you could think of. ... I don’t pay attention to it. The things that I’m working on right now I feel very excited about. I’m hitting a lot of good putts.
“Pretty soon, a lot of those good putts will start falling in the middle of the hole.”
