Tommy Fleetwood looks set to try something new for the Greens this week.
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While Tommy Fleetwood is still widely regarded as one of the best players without a PGA Tour win, 2024 was another successful year for the Englishman. He won on the DP World Tour, where he is ranked fifth this season, and made the PGA Tour Championship for the second consecutive season after missing out three years in a row.
But the 10th-ranked player in the world saw a slight dip in his performance on the PGA Tour this season. During his resurgent 2023 campaign, Fleetwood tied for 14th on the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained: Duke, gaining nearly half a stroke per round, a career-best mark but not far off 2022 and 2020 when he averaged about .4 Strokes Won on the green and was in the top 30 on Tour.
But this past season, Fleetwood dropped to 87th in shot put, gaining just 0.04 strokes per round, his second-worst mark since 2018, when he joined the Tour.
While Fleetwood has tried different paws here and there, he is mostly stuck with one Odyssey White Hot Pro #3 blade for most of his career, including his victory in Dubai earlier this season.
But it looks like Fleetwood is making quite a departure from his status quo as he was pictured with a new TaylorMade prototype in Abu Dhabi this week ahead of the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.
Fleetwood has been on TaylorMade’s equipment staff since 2021, but the seven-time DP World Tour winner has yet to play with a player from the OEM. He revealed the shot was something he had tested at home during the break between this week and his previous start at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship a month ago.
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“It’s a new TaylorMade gauge that I’ve been working on at home,” he said Wednesday. “And yeah, like the guys at TaylorMade, they’ve done an amazing job as we talked about, designing something a little bit different.
“It felt really, really good. It was the perfect time for me to practice something. It’s kind of hard these days. I love testing like my gear and testing things that are new and different, but it’s so hard with the way the schedule is. The tournaments are packed so close to each other and there is never a big event or not as important as it seems.”
TaylorMade is largely keeping details about the new barrel close to the vest, but a spokesperson for the OEM said the new putter “has the characteristics of its previous player, but utilizes the technological benefits of the Pure Roll and Truss insert.”
