Ben Griffin’s low-profile device experiment pays off in WWT win

Ben Griffin thinks the Mexican Fall Championship is a good time to try something new.

Griffin, who has already qualified for all of next year’s signature events, comes to the World Technology Championships with a free bonus. Without any form-related opportunities at El Cardonal in Diamante, Griffin decided to make a low-key gear change this week, swapping out his Scotty Cameron Newport 2 putter for a new TaylorMade Spider Tour X Black. Griffin ranked 19th on the PGA Tour in strokes gained from putting during the regular season, but he wanted to see if switching from a blade to a mallet would improve his performance on the greens.

The move paid off, as Griffin shot a final-round 63 to beat Chad Remy and Sami Valimaki by two strokes to win his third PGA Tour title of the season. Griffin’s putting experiment was born out of a study of 18 players who were ahead of him in putting, and what they had in common: a mallet.

“I’ll probably change it tomorrow,” Griffin joked about his new putter after the win. “She’s here to stay now. I don’t know. It’s been a fun week trying to putt. I actually looked at a lot of statistics this year. I was 19 years old in the Strokes Gained in Putting competition, and I believe at 19 I was the best blade putter on tour, and all these guys before me were switching from blades to mallets.”

El Cardonal didn’t get strokes data, but Griffin ranked second in putts per green in regulation with 1.59. The putter exchange also comes after Griffin’s last PGA Tour start, when a three-putt at the Pro Core Championship on Sunday cost him a chance to make the playoffs against Scottie Scheffler.

The fall FedExCup is a pressure cooker for pros trying to break into the top 100 to keep their cards, and for those hoping to earn a spot in next season’s first two signature events via Aon Next 10.

But for players like Griffin, it’s a chance to stay 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 week would be a good time for me to test it out,” Griffin said. “Because there are a lot of people here competing to get into the top 60 of Aon Next 10 and qualify for Pebble and Riviera, everyone is trying to get into the top 100 I had nothing to lose, so it was a really good week for me to try something that I probably wouldn’t have done next season, so I used it as an opportunity to see what would happen if I tried to putt with the mallet.”

Griffin said he plays with 15 different mallet putters in his hometown studio. He ultimately chose the TaylorMade Spider Tour X Black after experiencing the good feel of it before traveling to Mexico.

“I was fiddling with the spider putter. It felt really good out there and I took it out on the course, so before flying out here on Saturday and Sunday, hit a few good rounds and said why not and see what happens. And sure enough, it worked,” Griffin said.

With the win, Griffin joins Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy as the only players with three or more wins this season. Griffin won the team event at the New Orleans Classic in Zurich with Andrew Novak and finished second at the Charles Schwab Challenge a few weeks later. The wins headlined a year in which Griffin earned a spot in the Ryder Cup and surged into the top 10 in the Official World Golf Ranking.

“This is a breakout year,” Griffin said. “After my first win, I had a feeling that I was going to get at least another win soon, and sure enough, I did. I felt like I had a lot of positive experiences on the way to winning, and then I had enough experience, but things turned around and I learned a lot. Here I feel very confident and calm.

“Anytime I can be on a roster with those two names, it means I’m doing something really good. It helps that both guys are out this week.”

Another thing Griffin, Scheffler and McIlroy have in common? They all now use a version of the TaylorMade Spider putter.

That is, until Griffin decided to make another quiet change.