Scottie Scheffler benches the putter that won the Masters

RIDGELAND, S.C. – The world No. 1 and reigning PGA Tour Player of the Year plans to insert a new putter in the bag this week at the CJ Cup at Congaree Golf Club.

Scottie Scheffler, who had been using a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 model, will be rolling his rock with a Cameron T-5.5 Proto mallet this week.

“I typically don’t like changing equipment at all, but I’ve been using it now for probably two, three weeks,” Scheffler said. “Late in the year I putted what felt like to me pretty poorly, I was really streaky. I was trying a few different things and that’s not really a way to improve when you’re kind of, felt like I was kind of blindly throwing darts just trying to find something. Sometimes I was lining the ball up, sometimes I wasn’t.”

Scheffler actually enjoyed his best putting year statistically last season. He improved from 117^th in Strokes Gained: Putting (-.0.53) his rookie season in 2019-20 to 107^th  (+0.23) in 2020-21 to 58^th last season (+.202). But when asked to name the last tournament he putted up to his high standard, he mentioned the Masters, where he won his first major despite a four-putt at 18.

“Obviously the results there were good,” he said. “My memory for stuff like that isn’t really good, I have a very short memory, so the Masters is obviously one that sticks out in my head. I’m sure there’s a few throughout the year where I putted pretty good.”

Scheffler’s putter went cold in the final round of the Tour Championship – he  shot 74 and squandered the lead – in his last start and he struggled so much so at the Presidents Cup that he was seen putting under floodlights on Saturday night and getting tips from U.S. Assistant Captain Steve Stricker, who is regarded as an outstanding putter and trusted as a second set of eyes by no less than Tiger Woods.

“Sometimes it’s good to have a kind of different voice in your head,” Scheffler said. “Randy (Smith) and I have been working together for so long that it was kind of nice just to hear some different thoughts on how Steve approached putting, because I definitely was frustrated with how I was rolling it at the Presidents Cup. I wasn’t hitting my lines, I couldn’t get comfortable over the ball. If it was a stroke-play tournament, I would have been fine, I still would have been able to play good, but with it being match play, you’ve got to make those putts toward the end of the matches and I wasn’t able to do that. It was very helpful…