Jordan Spieth has shown really positive signs on the PGA Tour so far in 2026.
However, Spieth isn’t quite back to his best just yet and he’s struggling to actually get into contention on Sundays.
The 32-year-old has played really well at The Players Championship this week but his scores of 73 and 68 haven’t done him justice.
Spieth last won on the PGA Tour in April 2022 and he’ll be desperate to taste victory once again this season.
On Friday afternoon, Spieth shared his frustrations after finishing his round at The Players, after finishing with a double bogey on his final hole.
His golf game in general is in excellent shape right now but he’s simply not scoring as well as he should be.
That has very much been the case over the past few seasons really.
And judging by his stats, there is one root cause of his problems.
Jordan Spieth should trial a new mallet putter
Spieth’s struggles over the past few years have stemmed from his poor putting.
In fact, Spieth has finished outside the top 100 in strokes gained putting three times and outside the top 60 twice over the past seven seasons.
He has shown slight improvements on the greens on the PGA Tour this season and is ranked 17th in strokes gained putting in 2026.
However, he has struggled once again on the greens at The Players Championship, losing 0.460 strokes to the field.
The 13-time PGA Tour winner is a rare commodity in this day and age in the sense that he still uses a blade putter.
Many of the world’s best golfers have switched to mallet models over the past few years in an effort to become more consistent putters.
Players like Scottie Scheffler, Tommy Fleetwood and Rory McIlroy have all vastly improved their putting in recent times and they all put that down to the mallet putter.
Maybe it’s time for Spieth to follow those guys and make a switch in the putting department.
Spieth has played around with mallet models during practice at times throughout the years, but he has only used a deeper-faced putter once during a tournament.
The 32-year-old from Dallas, Texas, trialled a Scotty Cameron T5W Tour Only mallet putter at the Byron Nelson Classic in 2017, but the experiment didn’t last long.
Spieth put his trusty Scotty Cameron 009 Tour Prototype back in his bag immediately after the Byron Nelson finished.
Jordan Spieth must give a new putter time to work
The fact that he switched back so quickly doesn’t bode well but he should consider making the change on a long-term basis now.
It’s fair to say that Spieth didn’t give the mallet putter a sufficient chance back in 2017, but he has struggled so badly on the greens recently that a change of equipment is exactly what he needs.
A common misconception is that Spieth is a poor driver of the golf ball. In fact, he is quite the opposite.
He was ranked 15th in strokes gained off the tee in 2024 and has finished outside the top 38 only once since 2021.
Spieth’s main issue over the past seven years has been his putting. This is no a mini-blip, it’s a prolonged period of time where his trusty old putter has failed him.
It’s time for the three-time major champion to make a big move by adding a mallet putter to his bag.
He may find it hard to move on from his Scotty Cameron 009 Tour Prototype, but a mallet should theoretically help him win again and that should be all that matters.
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