Ever since the LPGA began keeping strokes gained stats in 2021, Minjee Lee has been one of the Tour’s worst putters statistically. Despite winning two majors before this season in that time, Lee has consistently ranked outside the top 120 and lost a half stroke or more on the greens in each of the last three seasons.
This year is a much different story. Lee is 8th on the LPGA Tour in strokes gained: putting and just led the field in the category at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championshipm as she won her third career major title last weekend.
The obvious catalyst behind the switch? Lee, a longtime blade user, made the move to a 42-inch Odyssey Ai-ONE Square 2 Square No. 7 Broomstick putter at the suggestion of her longtime coach, Ritchie Smith.
“We sat down after the end of last year, and were maybe this is an option to try it and just to see what our feels were,” Lee told GOLF. “And obviously, Ritchie, he was like, ‘I’m no expert, but we will figure it out together.'”
As the season was still coming to a close, Lee and Smith initially put the idea on the back burner, but once the offseason began, they decided to revisit it and Odyssey sent Lee a few different options to try.
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She eventually started to get comfortable with a No. 7 shape from Odyssey’s new Square 2 Square line (The exact putter is not yet available in a broomstick configuration at retail) and she started to roll both her gamer and the broomstick head to head.
“The first few sessions, we were like, ‘Oh, the roll is way better on the broomstick,'” Lee said. “And it was just more sort of trying to figure out like, which kind of grip to use, especially with my right hand, because I was trying to take my hands really out of the stroke and use the shoulders.”
Obviously, finding the proper fit with a broomstick can be a challenge. Unlike fitting for a conventional putter or a counterbalance model, you don’t exactly have the same feel as with a broomstick. Your stance is different, your grip is different and therefore your feel is going to be different. You’re essentially starting over from scratch.
Lee said she found better success with shorter versions of a broomstick because the longer putters felt heavier.
Then, the first time he challenged her brother, PGA Tour winner Min Woo Lee, to a putting competition with the new wand, she beat him.
“I was a bit chuffed,” she said, laughing.
Six months later, she’s added a major win to what’s already been a successful season and she’s looking for more.
“The more I play tournaments and the more I see putts go in and the more work I do with the broomstick, I think obviously I’m gaining more and more confidence and producing better results week in and week out,” Lee said. “I feel like I’m just getting a bit more comfortable with how it should be working and like kind of the stroke I need to put on it to have like kind of a pure roll.
