When certain players hit the golf course, there are just certain clubs you just know will be in their bags.
Tiger Woods’ Scotty Cameron Newport 2 putter; Brooks Koepka’s Nike Vapor Fly Pro 3-iron; and Jordan Spieth’s Scotty Cameron 009 putter.
Or at least that last one was until this past week.
The once unthinkable became a reality for Spieth as he changed putters at the WM Phoenix Open last week, with his 009 taking a back seat to a similarly shaped T.P. Mills Trad II Forged. Spieth’s first putter switch in nearly eight years resulted in a T4 finish, his best on the PGA Tour in 399 days.
The swap has actually been more than a year in the making.
Many gearheads would consider T.P. Mills a classic brand that was made famous by the likes of Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino and Phil Mickelson. But today, T.P. Mills doesn’t have much of a presence on the PGA Tour.
David Mills, son of founder Truett P. Mills, Sr., couldn’t point to the last time one of the company’s putters made it into the bag of a Tour pro, but said it might be more often than golf fans realize.
“We’ve been pretty successful,” Mills told GOLF, pointing to Amy Yang’s record-setting win at the LPGA’s 2023 CME Group Tour Championship with a T.P. Mills Fleetwood prototype. “We don’t advertise, we don’t pay players. Unless someone does their homework, they aren’t going to know about it.”
Mills said Spieth’s putter is actually about a year old. Early last year, a Dallas club builder, Frank Hartwick, reached out to Mills on Spieth’s behalf and requested a putter for the three-time major champion.
“He said Jordan knew who we were and respected the product,” Mills said. “Frank didn’t have a whole lot of information and I just said, ‘What’s the ground weight and what length?'”
The final build was a 353-gram head weight of hand-forged 1040 carbon steel, with a 70-degree lie angle, 3 degrees of loft and 34.5-inch length.
“The way I machine it out makes it sit well on the ground different than a lot of milled putters,” Mills said. “I’m not going to say exactly what I did to it to make it work because that would be difficult.”
After Mills had sent off the putter, Spieth thanked him for it through Hartwick, but Mills didn’t hear much else about it after that, and Spieth never put it in play last season.
That was until this fall when Spieth, during his recovery from wrist surgery, was, as many golf nerds do when they can’t hit full shots due to injury, messing around with his golf club collection in his basement.
The stability of the Mills impressed Spieth so much that he reached out to Mills and wanted to talk more about the putter.
Mills wouldn’t divulge what the two discussed but called it a “good visit.”
Spieth didn’t put the putter in play during his season debut at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am where he lost more than nine-tenths of a stroke to the field on the greens in a T69 finish.
By the time he arrived at TPC Scottsdale, he had several putters lying around his bag during a Wednesday practice session, but the only wand that saw the green was the Trad Forged II.
He pulled the trigger on the new flat stick for Thursday’s opening round and shot 68, but still didn’t seem all that confident in it.
“I’ve got a few options, just trying to mess a little with how it sits on the ground, the draft on the bottom of the putter, see if I can get it to where it sets aligning a little better and off the ball is a little bit smoother,” Spieth said after Thursday’s round. “I may use a few options this week. I may stick with the one I did today. We’ll see.”
Spieth stuck with the Mills all week and ended up finishing T4 and gaining more than nine-tenths of a shot in putting, good for 12th in the field.
After the final round, Spieth wasn’t asked if the putter will find a permanent home in his bag, but if we know anything about Spieth, nothing is off the table.
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