Editor’s note: We filed this piece for PGATour.com’s Equipment Report. 

Collin Morikawa jumped out to an early lead at the Memorial Tournament presented by Nationwide, doing so with a ‘new’ putter in the bag.

The 24-year-old has had a rough spell on the greens, finishing 2020 ranked 128th in Strokes Gained: Putting. He’s 180th in that statistic this season.

The Californian has been using a TaylorMade Spider FCG mallet-style putter, along with a ‘Saw’ grip he learned from Mark O’Meara, for much of this year, but in search of a change of fortunes on the greens, Morikawa has now switched back to a blade-style putter. He used a blade-style coming out of college and in last year’s win at Muirfield Village, at the Workday Charity Open. He added a SuperStroke grip and adjusted the loft on his blade this time.

But this isn’t your average story about a TOUR player switching putters. Morikawa settled on the putter after consulting TaylorMade’s online ordering portal that is available to everyone, from TOUR players to mere mortals. It paid off, as Morikawa shot a first-round 66 while gaining 1.8 strokes on the greens.

For more details on Morikawa’s switch, we spoke with TaylorMade’s Paul Demkowski, Principal Engineer, Product Development and TOUR Rep Todd Chew.

GolfWRX: In terms of MyTP, what did Collin see that he liked and why?

PD: Collin was checking out the options online and reached out to us with his specific needs for the head, the insert, alignment etc. What we built for him is similar to the one he was previously using – a TP Juno with a long neck and sightline on the topline.

The main difference is we machined the face to take loft away, 2 degrees to be exact. With his new setup he has his hands more forward. This allows us to then bend the shaft forward to get the loft he wants in a position where the face is square with hands forward. … If we don’t machine the loft away and simply bend the shaft forward for his new hand position the putter would have way too much loft on it.

Additionally, he commented on how much he likes the copper insert in his FCG putter. We do not have copper available for the TP putters, so we put a stainless steel insert into this putter for a harder feel.

So there are a couple of changes that were exclusive to him, but consumers can pretty much spec out 90% of his putter on our website.

Read the rest of the piece here.