Brian Harman is leading the field at The Open Championship at Royal Liverpool, and lots of that comes down to his spectacular play on the greens.
Over the first two round he has gained over 8 shots on the field with the flat stick. This was helped by a 100% conversion rate inside 10 feet and complete 3 putt avoidance over his first 36 holes at Hoylake.
So what is that big unusual putter he has in play?
- RELATED: What’s in Brian Harman’s bag?
Brian Harman Putter
If you don’t recognise Harman’s putter you can be forgiven. After all, it is a seven year old model from TaylorMade. It is one of their old Spider designs called a TaylorMade Spider OS CB.
OS stands for over-sized, which makes perfect sense given the large size of this untraditional mallet. CB? That’s counterbalanced. This means the balance point of the putter is higher up the shaft and nearer the hands than usual.
To achieve this the club head is heavier, and there is then additional weight added into the grip to balance this out. By making the putter heavier at both ends the club’s overall MOI increases, making the putter more stable. The Spider OS CB comes in at 405 grams which is about 55 grams heavier than a traditional putter.
The other key design feature of this putter was to do with alignment. The club head has a raised high contrast sight line that makes it easier to aim, as well as two white sight lines that frame the side of the golf ball. The contrasting colours on the top of the club head also make alignment easier.
The club has a hollow body construction to allow for weight to be distrubuted most effectively for performance. To deliver tour level sound and feel the inside of the putter head is filled with TaylorMade’s proprietary foam. A vertical, deep-milled face insert allows for better ball gripping for improved roll, sound, and feel.
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Brian Harman Putter Length
Brian has his putter at a pretty traditional length of 34″, perhaps a more interesting detail is the amount of loft on the face. Most putters have 3° or 4° of loft, this allows the ball to easily be lifted off the ground before the ball starts rolling. Harman has his loft set down to 2° generally this will work best on shorter grass and quicker greens as you don’t need as much loft to lift the ball off the surface. Brian uses a single bend shaft as he prefers the feel of a face balanced design.
Brian Harman Putting Grip
Harman has a pretty unusual way of gripping the putter. He putts cack handed but also keeps the back of his right hand very flat on the through-stroke, maintaining a square putter face which works well with the face balanced nature of this particular putter model.
Why is Harman putting so well?
So what has he been working on to roll the flatstick so solid? Here’s what he had to say in his press conference on Friday:
“There was a time middle of this year to where we were seriously thinking about going to the bullpen and pulling out something different. It’s been a good putter, but she’s been misbehaving a lot this year.
Last few weeks I found a little something on the greens that I felt like gave me a little better roll. I had one really nice day of putting at the U.S. Open, and then the following weeks I putted really nice.
Just trying to maintain that. Just good fundamentals and putting a good roll on it.” – Brian Harman
- RELATED: What’s in Bryan Harman’s bag?
