Rory McIlroy has decided to reverse his hands on his putter a little more than a month before the start of the Masters in a dramatic attempt to turn around his poor form on the greens.
The new putting stroke will be on display today when the world No 3 tees up alongside Nos 1 and 2 — Jordan Spieth and Jason Day — in the opening round of the WGC-Cadillac Championship at Trump National Doral. After missing the cut by a shot last week at the Honda Classic, an uncharacteristic occurrence mostly attributable to poor putting, the 26-year-old Northern Irishman has decided to replicate Spieth’s hold on the shortest club in the bag and go “left hand low”.
“I practised with the new grip over the weekend and it felt really, really good
“I feel like my left hand controls my putting stroke and that’s the lead hand for me,” McIlroy said. “But over the last few weeks I have felt like my right hand was becoming a little bit too dominant and a little too active in the stroke.
“So I practised with the new grip over the weekend and it felt really, really good. The roll of the ball was really good. The contact is much better and it just takes my right hand out of it. I really feel like I’m controlling the stroke with my left hand only. So I’m going to give it a try this week and see where we go with it.
“This is not a short-term thing. I’m going to stick with it regardless of what the outcome is tomorrow or this week or next week. You’re not going to see me putting conventionally again on Friday morning. I really do feel like it helps me make the stroke that I want to make. It’s a great feeling and it gives my stroke a better rhythm, a better flow. It’s something I’m going to stay with for a while.”
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While sounding drastic, such a switch will only bring McIlroy into line with many of the world’s best putters. Spieth, the Masters and US Open champion, has never putted any other way. Nor has Thomas Björn, of Denmark, who has long been one of the most proficient putters in the game. Sergio García and Henrik Stenson, two Ryder Cup players, have been known to go “cross-handed” now and then. But still it is a grip that carries with it a slight stigma, being the first resort for many of those afflicted by the putting yips.
Bernhard Langer, the two-times Masters champion, is perhaps the most notable and infamous example. While the German has employed many different grips and clubs over the years in his many battles with the dreaded “twitch”, changing to a left-hand-below-right grip was instinctively his initial option. In that sense, McIlroy’s similar change of direction — although he is not changing his putter — sounds ominously familiar.
“I missed a couple of putts on Friday at the Honda that I felt even before I made contact with the ball that my right hand had taken control — and I missed them left,” he admitted. “So I needed to do something different. This grip feels quite natural to me because I’ve done it before and I use it quite a lot in my practice drills. I’ve putted a lot with just my left hand. And it got to the stage where the drill started to feel a little bit better than the real thing. So I thought, ‘why not give it a go?’ ”
For those who watched McIlroy in action last week, such a change will come as no surprise. Despite making more birdies — nine — than Rickie Fowler, the tournament’s halfway leader, the former Open champion was four over par after 36 holes and 12 shots off the pace. Some of that gap was down to erratic play between tee and green, but too much resulted from missed putts, especially from short range.
As ever in golf, the numbers do not lie. And they are part of a recent trend. From the ten rounds that he has played on the PGA Tour this season, McIlroy is averaging 29.71 putts per 18 holes and ranks a lowly 169th. Spieth, in contrast, sits third in the same category with a much more acceptable average of 27.29. In other words, on the greens McIlroy has been conceding ten shots to the world’s top-ranked player over 72 holes. That is no way to be competitive.