Collin Morikawa got by with a little help from his friend.
Two weeks ago, the 29-year-old, who won the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am Sunday for his first victory since 2023, was playing a casual round with two-time PGA Tour winner Kurt Kitayama, his brother and caddie and Min Woo Lee, who ironically finished runner-up to Morikawa at Pebble.
And Morikawa, who finished last season near the bottom on Tour in strokes-gained putting, took notice of Daniel Kitayama’s TaylorMade Spider Tour X putter.
“I said, ‘Oh, let me try it,’” Morikawa said after his win at Pebble. “I tried it on maybe the 13th hole. Felt great. I was like, I jokingly said, ‘I might have to take this.’”
Then, he did.
“So the next two days, I actually didn’t touch a club other than my putter, or his putter,” Morikawa said. “That’s all I was doing in the hotel room. Like I didn’t hit balls, I didn’t do anything, just putting in the hotel room, putting, putting, putting. Obviously, that didn’t help for Phoenix [where he finished T54].”
Morikawa, one of the sport’s premier iron players, has always been spotty on the greens. He’s tried out several flatsticks throughout his career and last year began testing mallets. In the season-opener, the Sony Open in Hawaii, Morikawa missed the cut using Spider ZT Black, which Nelly Korda used in her victory two weeks ago.
Now, thanks to Kitayama, it appears he’s found one he’s comfortable with.
“It’s kind of settling nice to where it allows it to flow a little bit but it doesn’t have as much toe hang as the neck assumes just because of the mallet look,” Morikawa said after his second-round 62. “So it’s doing what I want. Hopefully, we can start them online tomorrow and see if they drop.”
The two-time major champion admits he’ll likely be unsettled on a putter for the rest of his career. But, after a win, it seems he’s not making a change anytime soon.
“I don't know if [Kitayama’s] going to want it back,” said Morikawa, who lost 0.050 strokes on Pebble’s greens, ranked 44th in the field. “He looked at it again this week. I think he’s trying to replicate it with maybe a different club or whatever.
“But it’s mine now.”
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Collin Morikawa Explains How Stolen Putter Helped End Winless Drought at Pebble Beach.
