KAPALUA, Hawaii – Hideki Matsuyama has won the Masters and is the all-time winningest Asian male golfer on the PGA Tour with 10 titles. He’s also, as the saying goes, “one of us.” Asked to explain his putter switch for the first round of The Sentry on Thursday, the Tour’s season-opening tournament at Kapalua Resort’s Plantation Course, Matsuyama said, “I saw somebody else using it and I thought, ‘Oh, this looks good,’ so I had them make one, and I’m using it this week.”
Simple as that and sounds a lot like why the average golfer makes a pit stop at the golf shop to get a new blade or mallet before his next round. Matsuyama’s new Scotty Cameron center-shafted blade putter worked wonders during the opening round in Maui as he made an eagle, seven birdies and one lone bogey to post an 8-under 65. That was good enough for the Japanese star to be tied for second place and to trail leader Tom Hoge by a shot.
Matsuyama, 32, carded four consecutive birdies starting at the fifth hole and tacked on another birdie at the 11th. Matsuyama erased his lone hiccup, a three-putt bogey at 13, with a 10-foot birdie at 14 and then reeled in an eagle at the par-5 15th when his second shot stopped 6 feet from the hole. One more circle on the card at 16 and he matched his lowest career round in 29 trips around the Plantation Course.
“I didn’t think I would shoot as low as I did today, so I’d love to do the same thing tomorrow and post another good score. I think it was a pretty good round,” said Matsuyama, who is attempting to complete the Hawaii slam having already won the Sony Open in Hawaii in 2022.
Switching putters is old hat for Matsuyama, who is always tinkering. He also rode a new putter to victory the last time he won on Tour at the FedEx St. Jude Championship in August. So, the putter carousel continues this week at Kapalua and is just another reminder that pros aren’t that different from the rest of us.
This article originally appeared on Golfweek: hideki-matsuyama-putter-swap-the-sentry
