Ben Griffin felt that a fall tournament in Mexico was as good a time as any to try something new.
Having already secured his spot in all of next year’s Signature Events, Griffin arrived at the World Wide Technology Championship with a free roll in his back pocket. With nothing status-related on the line for him at El Cardonal at Diamante, Griffin decided to make an under-the-radar equipment change for the week by swapping out 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 a switch from a blade to a mallet would elevate his play on the greens.
The move paid off as 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 putter experiment was born out of an examination of the 18 players who finished ahead of him in putting and the common trait they all share: a mallet.
“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’s been a fun week trying that putter out. I actually looked a lot at the stats this year. I was 19 in Strokes Gained: Putting, and I believe I was the best blade putter on Tour at 19, and all these guys ahead of me switched from blades to mallets.”
Ben Griffin’s winning highlights from WWT Championship
There were 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 swap 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 a playoff against Scottie Scheffler.
The FedEx Cup Fall is a pressure cooker for pros trying to play their way inside the top 100 to keep their card, and for those hoping to earn a spot in the first two Signature Events of next season via the Aon Next 10.
But for players like Griffin, it’s a chance to keep sharp while also testing out new and different equipment.
“It was just something I thought about, what would happen if I used a mallet, and I felt like this was a good week for me to test it out,” Griffin said. “Because so many guys here are competing to try to get in the top 60 in the Aon Next 10 and qualify for Pebble and Riviera, guys are trying to finish 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 used it as kind of an opportunity to see what would happen if I tried a mallet putter out.”
Griffin said he tinkered with 15 different mallet putters at his studio back home. 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 up there and I brought it out to the course, so on Saturday and Sunday before flying here, played some good rounds and said why not, see what happens. Sure enough, it worked,” Griffin said.
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 got win No. 2 at the Charles Schwab Challenge a few weeks later. Those wins headlined a year that has now seen Griffin earn a Ryder Cup spot and soar into the top 10 in the Official World Golf Rankings.
“It’s been a breakthrough year,” Griffin said. “I had a feeling after getting the first win, I felt like I was going to win at least another soon after, and sure enough, I did. I feel like I’ve just had so many positive experiences coming down the stretch winning, and then I’ve had enough experiences where it’s gone the other way to where I’ve learned a lot. Felt really pretty confident and composed down the stretch here.
“Anytime I can be on a list with those two names, it means I’m doing something pretty good. It was helpful both of those guys weren’t in the field this week.”
The other thing Griffin, Scheffler and McIlroy have in common? They all now use a version of the TaylorMade Spider putter.
That is, until Griffin decides to make another quiet change.
