After much speculation, we can now confirm that as of 8:33 AM local time at the 2020 PGA Championship being played at TPC Harding Park in San Francisco, California, Tiger Woods put into play a new Scotty Cameron Newport 2 Timeless Prototype.

It is an interesting move considering he has used his trusty Scotty Cameron Newport 2–with site dot alignment—for 14 of his 15 major wins (the asterisk 1 of 15 belonging to another Scotty Cameron putter—a Newport Te I3 “Terrylium” for his first Masters win in 1997).

The biggest changes that make this new Scotty Cameron different from his old reliable are

• Weights in the sole to allow Tiger to fine-tune the head weight and help him on slower greens.
• This is not the first time we have seen Tiger with a putter that has sole weights in tournament play. The first was when he used a TaylorMade Ardmore 3 at the Quicken Loans National July 2018.
• He also experimented with a similar putter to the one he is using this week at the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush but never put it into play (see below)

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@tigerwoods is messing around with one of these this week @theopen

A post shared by GolfWRX (@golfwrx) on Jul 15, 2019 at 10:07pm PDT

An increased length change of .25″, although small, is a big deal considering he has used the same specs for more than 2 decades. The known specs of the new Scotty Cameron Newport 2 Timeless Prototype are listed below.

Loft: 3.75 degrees
Length: 35.25″ (finished with grip)
Lie: 70 degrees
Head weight: TBD (presumably heavier than his 327-gram gamer)
Grip: Ping PP58 Blackout

Thanks to Ben Everill at PGATour.com for passing along this from Steve Stricker in his press conference Wednesday, which Stricker suggested the adjustability and the longer length of the Timeless are motivating factors for the change.

STEVE STRICKER: Yeah, I asked him about the putter switch. It’s basically the same putter with a little bit more flexibility in the putter. He’s able to change the weights around a little bit, but the length is the difference. He’s got a little more length on there, and that’s just so he can practice a little bit more without back pain. That’s what excites him the most is that he was able to put in a lot of time with this putter, and watching him putt, it looked exactly the same to me. He rolled the ball great.”

Specs of his long-used Scotty Cameron Newport 2 GSS

Specs

(note: with the age of the putter these specs may be +/-)

Loft: 3.75 degrees
Length: 35″ (finished with grip)
Lie: 70 degrees
Head weight: 327 grams
Grip: Ping Man (Black Out)