In a world where many think putting with a blade is a dying art…rise Maverick McNealy.

Now his story doesn’t come without a slight bit of villainy. He, too, went to the dark side, but swiftly returned. It’s a plot for one of the greatest sci-fi movie franchises.

As McNealy heads to TPC Sawgrass for The Players Championship, the world No. 25 is coming off a week’s spell using the TaylorMade Spider putter on the West Coast. Surprisingly, though, and against all odds, McNeally has returned to his Odyssey Toulon Prototype Santa Monica blade, instead of following the mallet crowd.

“I think there’s, there’s a lot of value in a mallet to, to align properly and look where you’re aiming and stroke it that way,” McNealy said on why he made the initial switch to a TaylorMade Spider Tour X.

Oddly, he equipped it with the short slant neck instead of the L-Neck, which potentially would have better represented his Toulon blade.

His one-week experiment resulted in a missed cut at the Genesis Invitational, during which he lost over 3 strokes on the greens. A drastic decline from the player who led the Tour in Strokes Gained: Putting in 2023 and hasn’t been outside the top 30 in the stat since 2021.

At the time, the change in putter meant that only four of the top 25 in the Official World Golf Ranking were using a blade putter, with almost half using a variation of the Spider. You couldn’t blame McNealy for trying it either, with five of the first six winners on Tour this season all using the TaylorMade mallet.

For McNealy, though, the Spider couldn’t replicate an all-important key that his Toulon has – sound.

“The sound of this Toulon, for whatever reason, it just matches perfectly with my ear with the speed I’m trying to hit,” McNealy said. “… the slightly louder sound has helped with faster greens.”

The Spider switch has helped McNealy. In the opposite fashion to some, most notably Rory McIlroy, who likes to practice his putting with an older blade putter, McNealy thinks the Spider has helped him train his putting stroke.

The Toulon blade in question actually has a comical backstory. McNealy describes it as a “Hideki reject.”

The putter itself was originally designed for the Japanese superstar. Matsuyama is a chronic putter swapper, travelling and testing at least a handful each week he’s out on Tour, but it was McNealy who picked it up off the Tour truck, having putted with prototype Toulon Stanford for most of his career.

Although the Toulon didn’t make it in Matsuyama’s museum-like collection of flatsticks, it fortunately found a great home with McNealy.