Tommy Fleetwood makes putting change; perhaps it leads to 2025 success
Before this week’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship, Tommy Fleetwood made an equipment change, opting to go with a different flat stick on the greens.
Tommy Fleetwood has made an equipment change despite a relatively successful year to date.
He began his 2024 season with a victory at the Dubai Invitational, thanks to Rory McIlroy’s watery demise on the 18th hole. But the Englishman did not record another win after that, keeping his winless PGA Tour drought alive and well.
He missed only two cuts all year, at Bay Hill and Royal Troon, and posted his best-ever finish at Augusta National, tying for third. He also won the silver medal at the Olympics. It was a successful year by all accounts, which extended to his three most recent starts on the DP World Tour, all top-12 finishes or better.
Yet, Fleetwood arrives in Abu Dhabi this week with a new putter. He has spent the past month at home testing new TaylorMade prototypes, and he is excited to use a new one this week in the first event of the DP World Tour playoffs. Maybe it will pay dividends and give him another win soon. After all, Fleetwood’s putting statistics regressed considerably in 2024 compared to 2023.
Consider this: in 2023, the year Fleetwood clinched the winning point in the Ryder Cup, the Englishman ranked 14th on tour in strokes gained putting. More impressively, he ranked first on the PGA Tour in one-putt percentage, needing just one stroke 44.4% of the time. He also ranked sixth in putts per round and 20th in birdie conversion percentage. When Fleetwood stuck his approach near the hole, he usually converted. No wonder why he made 15-of-28 cuts and posted eight top-10s on the PGA Tour in 2023—twice as many as this year.
In 2024, Fleetwood’s birdie conversion percentage dropped by more than four points—from 33.64% to 29.22%—plummetting him from 20th down to 151st in that metric. He also saw remarkable drops in strokes gained putting, putts per round, and one-putt percentage. Not all hope was lost, however. Fleetwood ranks 18th on tour in holing putts from inside 10 feet, doing so nearly 90% of the time. But his other putting stats pale in comparison to his previous seasons.
He needed to change something, so he felt obligated to experiment this week—a perfect time to do so, given that we are not in the most strenuous part of the PGA Tour season.
“I love testing my equipment and testing things that are new and different, but it’s so difficult with the way the schedule is. The tournaments are packed in so close to each other, and there’s never not a big event or not an important event, it seems,” Fleetwood said Wednesday.
“Looking forward to going out there [on Thursday] and getting it into competition because that’s the only thing I haven’t done yet, so that’s exciting.”
While on the putting green on Wednesday. Fleetwood chatted with former European Tour stalwarts Ken Brown and David Howell, who both work in broadcasting nowadays.
“We have had some great conversations about putting over the years, and I just always like seeing the guys and talking about the game. It’s just nice being around people who are still so passionate about the game,” Fleetwood added.
“We were talking about my putting and a couple of things, and [they are] two great putters, two of the best putters I’ve ever met. So you’re all picking things up and always learning.”
Maybe Fleetwood will take after Scottie Scheffler, who switched from a blade to a mallet putter ahead of the Arnold Palmer Invitational. Scheffler went on to win eight events in 2024, including The Masters and the Olympics; he will win the Player of the Year Award again, too. Funny enough, McIlroy, while appearing on the broadcast during the Genesis Invitational in February, suggested the World No. 1 should switch to a mallet. Scheffler struggled on the greens in January and February, ranking towards the bottom in the field nearly every week. The mallet then turned the tide towards Scheffler as he went on to have a historic year.
As for Fleetwood, nobody knows how this move will pay off this week, next week in Dubai, or beyond. But sometimes, professional golfers need to make minor changes to improve the smallest parts of their game, and those moves often pay off. If they do so for Fleetwood, watch out for him in 2025. He is due on the PGA Tour, after all.
Jack Milko is a golf staff writer for SB Nation’s Playing Through. Be sure to check out @_PlayingThrough for more golf coverage. You can follow him on Twitter @jack_milko as well.