Reed visited local Detroit club fitter to evaluate his putter, but found a different issue

DETROIT, Mich. – Patrick Reed has used an Odyssey White Hot Pro 3 putter for years, even before winning with one at the 2018 Masters. While he’s experimented with other putters throughout his career, he’s mostly opted for that model. Even a familiar golf club, however, needs a check up every now and then, and Reed went to an unexpected source for an evaluation.

Coming into the 2019 Rocket Mortgage Classic, Reed was ranked 65th in Strokes Gained: Putting on the PGA TOUR, and he has recorded just one top-10 finish on the season.

Fresh off a T30 finish last week at the Travelers Championship, Reed had an appointment set up at a Club Champion – a nationwide company that specializes in club fitting – in Royal Oak, Michigan, which is nearby Detroit Golf Club, host of the 2019 Rocket Mortgage Classic. The local Club Champion, in addition to having full-swing hitting bays equipped with Trackman, has a SAM (Science and Motion) PuttLab that analyzes putting performance in depth.

As Reed explained to Golf Channel, he enlisted the services of Club Champion to verify there was nothing wrong with the specifications of his putter.

“I went just to check to make sure that my specs were right,” Reed told Golf Channel on Thursday. “For me personally, the best way to do it is if I can find a SAM lab. Club Champions have those, and those have high enough cameras and stuff that you can actually see what’s going on. So you can tell by that rather than machines, since every machine has a different variance. But cameras don’t really lie.”

Instead of finding an issue with his Odyssey putter, however, he found an issue with his putting setup.

Adam White, a Master Club Fitter at the local Club Champion who was on site during Reed’s Club Champion session – along with Reed’s coach Kevin Kirk -- said that while his stroke was in the “88th percentile in overall consistency” and “94th percentile in rotation,” Reed was setting up 1.2 degrees closed to his intended target.

Based on the data, according to White, the issue was not with the stroke or with the putter itself, but rather with Reed’s setup position. During the “35-40 minute session,” White and his staff had Reed try a few different putters, but Reed ultimately decided to stick with his familiar Odyssey putter.

Reed improved on his putting performance in his second-round 68 on Friday, losing 0.952 strokes putting, versus losing 1.629 strokes in his first round 68 on Thursday. He is currently in T15 (at the time this article was posted).