At the end of every season, when all the year-end stats are officially in the books, Nick Kumpis of Smartline Putting beings his annual tradition: He goes through each of the winners from the year and sees, quite simply, the basics of what each of them are doing. How they grip the club, the putter they’re using.
It always provides an interesting look at what’s popular on tour, so let’s take a look his posts this year.
What grip style are pros using?
As you can see, when it comes the style of grip, almost 80 percent of tour winners — and nine of the top 10 in SG: Putting from last season — use a conventional, reverse overlap grip. This involves placing your trail hand below your lead hand, with the index finger of your lead hand resting on top of the pinky and ring finger of your trail hand. The claw grip is conspicuously absent this yea, and arm-lock putting isn’t represented as much, either.
“Only one arm lock with Bryson DeChambeau not winning this year,” he writes. “Always interesting to see what the best players are doing. Would have thought the alternate grips would keep increasing but not this year. Traditional grip still the King.”
What putter type are pros using?
A place where the tour is more evenly divided, however, is in the type of putter they use. As Kumpis outlines, the winners were relatively evenly split between blade, mallet and wingback style putters. Indeed, if you consider the latter two styles the same, they come out ahead.
“If you combine the mallet and wingback that type would have more wins with 31 total,” Kumpis writes. “So mallet type putters had more wins last year versus blade putter. Might do one more with brand of putter from the winners.