Ben Griffin felt a fall tournament in Mexico was a good time to try something new.
Having already secured his spot in all of next year’s Signature Events, Griffin arrived at the World Technology Championship with a free roll in his back pocket. With nothing status-related on the line for him at El Cardonal in Diamante, Griffin decided to make an under-the-radar equipment change by swapping his Scotty Cameron Newport 2 putter for a new TaylorMade Spider Tour X Black. Griffin finished the PGA Tour regular season ranked 19th in Strokes Gained: Putting, but wanted to see if switching from a blade to a hammer would improve his play on the greens.
The move paid off when Griffin fired a final-round 63 to beat Chad Ramey and Sami Valimaki by two to claim his third PGA Tour title of the season. Griffin’s putting experiment came from a study of the 18 players who finished ahead of him in putting and the common feature they all share: a hammer.
“I’ll probably switch tomorrow,” Griffin joked about his new putter after the win. “She’s here to stay for now. I don’t know. It was a fun week trying out that putter. I’ve actually been looking at the stats a lot this year. I was 19 in Strokes Gained: Putting, and I think at 19 I was the best blade putter on Tour, and all these guys before me switched from blades to mallets.
Ben Griffin’s WWT Championship winning highlights
There was no Strokes Gained data at El Cardonal, but Griffin did finish second in the field in Putts per Greens in Regulation at 1.59. The putter change also comes after Griffin’s last PGA Tour start, where a three-putt on Sunday at the Procore Championship cost him a chance to get into the playoffs against Scottie Scheffler.
The FedEx Cup Fall is a pressure cooker for pros trying to battle their way into the top 100 to keep their card, and for those hoping to earn a spot in next season’s first two Signature Events via the Aon Next 10.
But for players like Griffin, it’s a chance to stay sharp while trying out new and different equipment.
“It was just something I was thinking about, what would happen if I used a hammer, and I thought this was a good week to test it out,” Griffin said. “Because so many guys here are competing to try to get into the top 60 in the Aon Next 10 and qualify for Pebble and Riviera, guys are trying to finish in the top 100 to keep their cards. For me, I didn’t have much to lose, so it was a really great week for me to be able to experiment a little bit. This is something I probably wouldn’t have done if it was the start of next season, so I kind of used it as an opportunity to see what would happen if I took a hammer putter out.”
Griffin said he tinkered with 15 different mallet putters in his home studio. He eventually landed on the TaylorMade Spider Tour X Black after getting a good feel for it before heading to Mexico.
“I was messing around with the Spider putter. It felt really good there and I took it to the course, so on Saturday and Sunday before I flew out here, I played some good rounds and said why not, see what happens. And sure enough, it worked,” said Griffin.
With the win, Griffin joined Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy as the only players to win three or more times this season. Griffin won the team event at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans with Andrew Novak and then claimed the second win at the Charles Schwab Challenge a few weeks later. These wins capped a year that has now seen Griffin earn a Ryder Cup spot and rise into the top 10 of the Official World Golf Rankings.
“It’s been a breakthrough year,” Griffin said. “I felt like after I got the first win, I felt like I was going to get another win shortly after, and sure enough, I did. I feel like I’ve had so many positive experiences winning, and then I’ve had plenty of experiences after that where it went the other way where I learned a lot. I really felt pretty confident and calm during the journey here.”
“Anytime I can be on a list with these two names, it means I’m doing something pretty well. It was helpful not having both guys in the field this week.”
The other thing that Griffin, Scheffler and McIlroy have in common? They all now use some version of the TaylorMade Spider putter.
That is, until Griffin decides to make another quiet change.
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