South Korea’s Tom Kim has switched to a brand-new Scotty Cameron Phantom 9.2 putter for the the lads’s Olympic golf competitors in France.
All through his PGA TOUR profession, Kim has largely used a blade-style putter, though he has experimented with different approaches, together with this week.
Earlier than the opening spherical at Le Golf Nationwide, the 22-year-old made an impromptu change to a mallet putter. It paid off as he shot a 5-under 66, a quantity solely surpassed by Hideki Matsuyama of Japan (63), and Xander Schauffele of the USA (65).
“It sort of simply gave me a special really feel over the ball and I undoubtedly put lots of work into it after the Open Championship and it undoubtedly carried out nicely,” Kim stated after his first spherical on the Paris Video games. “It undoubtedly wasn’t in thoughts to be trustworthy. It truly simply sort of occurred. They shipped it over after The British (Open). I didn’t actually plan to modify. It was simply outperforming the one I used to be utilizing and made sense.”
Kim started testing the brand new prototype Scotty Cameron Phantom 9.2, which made waves when Justin Thomas used it for the primary time on the Genesis Scottish Open.
“This explicit mallet, which is our Phantom 9, we name it a 9.2 as a result of it’s acquired the plumber’s neck on it, is simply actually influenced from different gamers,” Brad Cloke, Scotty Cameron participant consultant instructed PGATOUR.COM. “So this can be a very comparable setup to what we constructed for Justin Thomas, the one which sort of acquired lots of buzz a few weeks in the past … Tom sort of observed it and hit some putts with Justin’s and we had talked about doing one thing like that extra so for an offseason take a look at.”
Kim made his TOUR Championship debut final season, and this putter change may very well be the spark to assist him rise into the highest 30 on the planet.
The plumber’s neck inset, which is usually seen on putters made within the basic blade type, is the important thing element of the Phantom 9.2 prototype that assisted Kim in making the change from the blade to the mallet head.
“The plumber’s neck is the large factor and I believe for Tom (Kim) that’s a superb factor as a result of it sort of provides him the very best of each worlds,” Cloke added. “The plumber’s neck mallet provides him the familiarity that he sees within the blade however provides him sort of that forgiveness and that framing facet of the mallet itself.”
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