Has the age of blade putters come to an end?

AI-assisted summary
• Blade-style putters, once dominant on the PGA Tour, are becoming less common among professional golfers.
• Many top-ranked players, including Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, have switched from blades to mallet-style putters for improved performance.
• Retail trends reflect the shift on tour, with golf shops selling significantly more mallet putters than blades to amateur players.

Walk around a PGA Tour practice green these days and you’ll notice something missing. There are still staff bags lined up like luxury cars, caddies cleaning clubs and bags from manufacturers scattered here and there, showcasing putters that players can try. But the armada of blade-style putters leaning against those demo bags is dwindling. Twenty years ago, sleek, heel-toe weighted blades were everywhere, but over the past decade, they’ve quietly thinned out. Blades are certainly not extinct, but the era of the minimalist putter, the blade, may be drawing to a close.

After sketching his heel-toe weighted blade on a 78-rpm record sleeve, Karsten Solheim, the founder of Ping Golf, released the first Anser putter in 1966. It was a hit from the start because it redistributed mass away from the center and pushed it to the perimeter, boosting forgiveness and consistency. Solheim’s creation has become the most mimicked and copied piece of golf equipment ever, with nearly every brand offering its version of the Anser, and throughout the 1970s, 80s and 90s, Anser-style blades dominated golf.

Today, however, if you look at the Official World Golf Ranking as of Nov. 10 and then check the putters that are currently being used by golfers in the top 10, you will see, well … no blades.

That name at No. 9 is interesting, Ben Griffin, because not only did he win the World Wide Technologies Championship on Sunday, he benched his blade putter and, for the first time, used a TaylorMade Spider Tour Black mallet instead.

When asked if the new putter was likely to stay in his bag, the three-time PGA Tour winner replied Sunday night, “I don't know. I think I had a good amount of fun with it this week, so I'll have about a month and a half to digest it and see if I want to bring it to the Sony Open. I think she's here to stay.”

What happened to blades?

No player was more influential in the 1990s and 2000s than Tiger Woods, and he won three U.S. Amateurs with a blade before claiming the 1997 Masters with his Scotty Cameron Newport Teryllium TeI3. He went on to win 14 more majors using a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 GSS, including his most recent at the 2019 Masters. Among equipment lovers, that Scotty Cameron putter became as iconic as Tiger’s red shirt, and to a generation of young golfers, the message was clear: The game’s best putters use a blade.

Woods’s influence over a generation of developing juniors like Rory McIlroy, Rickie Fowler and other current stars was undeniable, but when confronted by data and analytics, even the most powerful stigmas in golf — like mallets only being good for golfers who struggle on the greens — eventually get cast aside.

As players who grew up idolizing Woods matured and oftentimes struggled on the greens, many began drifting away from blades and toward mallets to improve their performance. The logic was simple: If a mallet helps you make more putts, why not use it?

Fowler is a perfect example. When he left Oklahoma State in 2009 and turned pro, he was a blade guy, and he continued to use a Scotty Cameron blade for years. In fact, in 2015, Fowler found a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 GSS that was originally made as a backup for Woods at Scotty Cameron’s studio and began using it. In 2017, he led the PGA Tour in Strokes Gained: Putting (0.852), but in 2021, he slumped to 126th in the category. In 2022, things got worse and he finished 161st.

But after switching to an extended-length Odyssey Jailbird mallet with a 17-inch grip after trying his caddie’s putter and liking it, things turned around in 2023, and he was back up to 48th in Strokes Gained: Putting.

Ironically, Fowler was paired with Wyndham Clark in the final round of the 2023 U.S. Open at Los Angeles Country Club, an event Clark would go on to win using a replica of Fowler’s Jailbird mallet that he added to his bag after trying Rickie’s. And Clark, as you might guess, arrived on the PGA Tour in 2019 as a blade guy.

Throughout most of 2025, Fowler has used a L.A.B. DF 2.1 mallet and Clark now plays a L.A.B. DF3 mallet.

Jason Day shines the way

The catalyst that really jump-started the surge in mallet use on the PGA Tour came in 2016 when Jason Day, who had used a white and a black TaylorMade Spider Limited Itsy Bitsy mallet putter, switched into a red model and produced the greatest putting season in history. The Australian was already an outstanding putter, but Day finished with a Strokes Gained: Putting average of +1.13 in 2016, making him the first player ever to top +1.0 for a whole season. His putter, fitted with a slant neck that gave it a moderate amount of toe hang, was unique for its time because it offered the forgiveness of a mallet while complementing Day’s arced putting stroke. Before that, most mallet putters were face-balanced and ideally designed for straight putting strokes.

Day’s putter broke the floodgates and suddenly the Spider Tour wasn’t just a quirky prototype—it was the hottest putter in the world. A decade later, its influence is undeniable. As of Nov. 10, half the players ranked in the top 10 in the OWGR use a TaylorMade Spider putter.

After Day’s breakthrough season, players who had spent years clinging to their blades began experimenting with compact mallets that offered stability without sacrificing feel, including Justin Thomas and Patrick Cantlay.

During the 2021 FedEx Cup playoffs, McIlroy benched his blade, put the TaylorMade Spider Tour he had been experimenting with back in his bag and never looked back.

"There's quite a lot of inconsistency in it for me. It's almost like I need to practice with the blade at home, because you have to get your stroke spot-on to hit good putts with that style of putter," he said before the 2021 BMW Championship. "But then, when I come out here, I started hitting putts with the Spider again, and it felt so easy. Felt like I couldn't not start it online. There's a lesson in there somewhere about maybe just keeping the blade at home and practicing with it and then coming out here and putting with something that's got a little more technology in it."

McIlroy has won seven times since 2022 and ranks seventh on the PGA Tour in 2025 in Strokes Gained: Putting as of Nov. 10.

Using different blade putters, Scottie Scheffler won over $21 million in PGA Tour prize money in 2023, while also being among the worst putters on the PGA Tour. The following year, at the 2024 Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill, he switched to a TaylorMade Spider Tour X L-Neck mallet and won. The following week, he won again at the Players Championship.

Scheffler said that his Spider mallet’s larger size enabled him to use a larger alignment line, and that has helped him aim his putter more effectively and start more putts on his intended target line more easily.

Scheffler went from being ranked No. 162 in Strokes Gained: Putting with a blade in 2023 to 77th in 2024 with a Spider Tour. As of Nov. 10, he was 21st, after having won the PGA Championship, British Open and put a chokehold on the top spot on the Official World Golf Ranking.

Should you ditch your blade?

“We’re definitely seeing less blades being sold and way more mallets,” said Chris Cote, the owner and operator of Chris Cote’s Golf Shop in Portland and Southington, Connecticut. “I would say one blade to every 10 mallets. We’re certainly ordering less and less Anser-style putters and definitely no 8802-style blades.”

A blade is like a scalpel; it’s an elegant, finely tuned instrument that rewards. On your best day, when your putting stroke feels grooved and the greens are pure, nothing beats it. But golf isn’t a game of best days. It’s a game of averages, and for many golfers, mallets can help to lift up those lows without sacrificing anything on the good days.

So, what does all this mean for you, the weekend player who wants to stop 3-putting and jar a few more putts?

It means that the next time you’re standing over a six-footer wondering why nothing is dropping, you might want to stop guessing and start getting fit. Most golfers never get custom fit for a putter. They wander into the pro shop, grab something off the rack that looks cool or feels familiar, roll a few putts on the carpet, and hope for the best. That’s not fitting — that’s window shopping.

A proper putter fitting will reveal things that make your putting stroke unique and it will show you your ideal putter’s lie angle, loft and alignment style. It’ll tell you whether you should be using a blade or a mallet. You might find that a high-MOI mallet gives you better distance control, or that a zero-torque design helps your putter square up naturally. Test everything, be open-minded and let the data be your guide.

If you’ve always used a blade and you’re struggling, maybe it’s time to try something that looks a little different. Switching to a mallet might take some getting used to, but if you keep replacing your old putter with something that is nearly identical, you shouldn’t expect anything to change.