Think Eugenio Chacarra’s TaylorMade Spider Tour S Long putter looks a bit different? Well, it is!
The now four-time winner on the DP World Tour is one of a growing number of young pros wielding a broomstick and has used a different model for much of the season. But behind the scenes, he was working on improving.
You may notice that, unlike most players using this putter style, Chacarra’s putter isn’t as upright as the rules of golf allow. He stands notably farther from the ball. That’s a change he’s made recently after working with TaylorMade Tour Rep Alex Marine over the past 4-5 months.
Marine and Chacarra had worked together previously, during the latter’s Oklahoma State days, but they hadn’t gone real deep into fitting him until this summer.
“He first switched into Spider Tour S Long at the Nexo Championship and then over the next few weeks continued to do some work to refine the characteristics of the putter to produce what he was looking for,” Marine said.
That led to a realization at the BMW PGA Championship in September that a 79-degree lie angle was too upright for Chacarra. The Race to Dubai leader has used a long putter dating back to at least his college days, and most of them have been around a 79-degree lie angle, which is pretty standard for most long-build putters.
At Wentworth, TaylorMade putter rep James Holley helped Marine and Chacarra work through a solution.
“He would aim left and toe it in in an attempt to start it online, which created inconsistent speed,” Marine said. “We found that if the putter was flatter, he would be able to get his eye line more inside the ball and line it up better.
“So we flattened it from 79° to 76°. Between the shape and stability of the Spider Tour S and the total weight of 870g, we built a high MOI putter at the exact spec to fit Eugenio’s stroke and the feel he was looking for with Pure Roll.”
Despite already winning twice this season, Chacarra also worked with the reps and the GRASP Smart Putting gate to hone his mechanics.
“He was hitting the ball and looking up straight for it with a short backswing,” Marine said. “So I would hold his head while he was putting to keep his head down and that got his path a lot straighter and his follow-through and backstroke a lot longer as well.”
Since Wentworth, Chacarra ranks 3rd on the DP World Tour in adjusted Strokes Gained: Putting with the new Spider Tour S Long. Before the switch, he was outside the top-75 on the Tour. He also saw dramatic improvements in putting from 6-12 feet (11 percent in 5 events before the switch, 48 percent since) and three-putting from outside of 30 feet (down 5 percent).
It all came together for Chacarra last week at the DP World India Championship, where he finished fifth in SG: Putting at Delhi Golf Club.
Disclaimer : This story is auto aggregated by a computer programme and has not been created or edited by DOWNTHENEWS. Publisher: golf.com
