Brian Harman used a new prototype putter this week.
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Brian Harman may have a throwback gear setup by modern Tour standards, but the latest equipment addition to his bag jumps on a very popular Tour trend.
For Thursday’s opening round of the Valero Texas Open, Harman added TaylorMade’s Spider 5K-ZT Prototype to the bag and it paid immediate dividends.
Harman entered the week 145th in strokes gained: putting with his gamer TaylorMade Spider OS CB, a putter that was originally released in 2016.
“I’ve always liked the larger high-MOI, face-balanced putters for some reason,” Harman told GOLF last year. “Haven’t changed much in the past several years and don’t see that changing anytime soon. It does the job.”
Well, Harman made a huge change this week to the Spider 5K-ZT (the ZT stands for zero torque), which hops on the popular zero torque trend on Tour over the past few years. TaylorMade’s entry builds on the Spider platform, which was the winningest putter on the PGA Tour last season.
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While TaylorMade is staying fairly tight-lipped about the new design, Harman went to the new model in part because of a more upright lie angle.
A spokesperson from TaylorMade told GOLF: “Harman’s bias is a slight right aim with a push back online, and the ZT was ‘point and shoot’ for him. Easier to line up and aim. His previous putter was at 67°, so ZT being more upright helped him get his eye line more over the ball.”
Harman said Sunday the putter helped free up his stroke.
“I looked at my stats from last year and I probably had the best iron game of my career, approach to the green, and probably my worst year from 10 to 20 feet putting,” he said Sunday. “So still really good inside 10 feet, but that section there is where I was getting all my looks and I wasn’t making any of them. I had toyed with the idea of switching putters for a while. Picked that one up on Tuesday this week, it felt really good and it rolls nice, just kind of freed me up a little bit.”
With the new wand, Harman was sixth in the field in strokes gained: putting, picking up more than 5.3 strokes on the field on his way to his fourth PGA Tour win. While it’s tough to expect changes next week at a major, it wouldn’t be surprising to see players flocking to try TaylorMade’s newest Spider in two weeks at Harbour Town.
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The rest of Harman’s bag consists of clubs, mostly four years old or older. Harman still plays the 2017 Titleist Pro V1 golf ball, which is the first golf ball he tried when switched back to a mostly Titleist gear setup and it came about because of a funny story when he played the first Zurich Classic team event in 2018 with Johnson Wagner.