Live leaderboard: Spieth looks to keep lead

Scottie Scheffler’s last putter switch paid quick dividends. He won in his first start with a new Scotty Cameron Special Select Timeless Tourtype GSS prototype, then rolled off three more wins in his next five starts, including the Masters, to reach world No. 1. Surely, Scheffler hopes his latest switch leads to such quick success. The reigning PGA TOUR Player of the Year has a new flatstick in the bag at this week’s THE CJ CUP in South Carolina, his first individual tournament since finishing second at the TOUR Championship in August. “I typically don’t like changing equipment at all, but I’ve been using (the new putter) now for probably two, three weeks,” Scheffler said Wednesday. “Late in the year I putted what felt like to me pretty poorly, I was really streaky. I was trying a few different things and that’s not really a way to improve when you’re kind of, felt like I was kind of blindly throwing darts just trying to find something. Sometimes I was lining the ball up, sometimes I wasn’t.” The new putter that Scheffler has in the bag this week is a new Scotty Cameron T-5.5 Proto mallet putter. The mallet is a departure from the style that Scheffler has used in recent years, but it reminds him of the style that he used during a successful junior career that included a victory at the U.S. Junior Amateur. Why the drastic change? “For me it’s just really easy to line up, I feel like I’m more consistent with it,” Scheffler said of the new putter. “I feel like my ceiling’s still the same. I can get hot with the putter and make a ton of putts, but I felt like my floor was a little too low last year, so hopefully this will be one of those deals that will kind of raise the floor.” At last month’s Presidents Cup, Scheffler was seen getting putting tips from U.S. Captain’s Assistant Steve Stricker and working past sunset with his longtime coach, Randy Smith, on Quail Hollow’s putting green. “I definitely was frustrated with how I was rolling it at the Presidents Cup,” Scheffler said. “I wasn’t hitting my lines. I couldn’t get comfortable over the ball.” As Scotty Cameron tour rep Brad Cloke explains it, Scheffler was recently practicing at home with an older Scotty Cameron Futura T5W mallet putter that the company had sent him years ago. Feeling that the T5W putter was helping him start the ball on-line more consistently, Scheffler asked Cloke last week for an updated version of the putter. Scotty Cameron then built Scheffler a new prototype of the Phantom X T-5.5 putter, which has a single black line on the top-line and two white lines on the back flange, just like the T5W putter Scheffler practiced with at home. For further customization, Scheffler’s new putter also has custom “Grinder” and “S.S.” stampings on the outer toe and heel portions, and it comes with deeper face milling marks, helping soften the feel and acoustics to match his previous GSS blade putter. Cloke said the size and stability of the Phantom’s mallet head are likely what helped Scheffler start the ball on his intended line more often. “I think the key takeaway, though, was just getting it lined up better for him, and framing it a little better than the blade,” Cloke told GolfWRX on Tuesday. While the putter switch may seem surprising after winning four times in 2022, Scheffler actually recorded negative Strokes Gained: Putting stats in six of his previous nine events where the stat was measured (the Genesis Scottish Open and The Open Championship did not report Strokes Gained: Putting stats). Scheffler finished the 2022 season ranked fourth in both Strokes Gained: Approach-the-Green and Strokes Gained: Tee-to-Green but was 58th in Strokes Gained: Putting. A new putter could help Scheffler get on another hot streak like the one we saw in the spring, though. We’ll have to wait until Thursday to see if the putter officially gets the call-up into competition, but if it does, another string of victories could be in store for the world No. 1.

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England’s Paul Casey carded an eight-under-par 64 in the third round of the Dubai Desert Classic on Saturday to take a one-shot lead heading into the final round.

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