As the PGA TOUR wraps up the 2025 season, it was a year for unique winners. A total of 35 different golfers lifted a trophy throughout the year. But in a year that was difficult to predict who would come out on top, one standout remained – mallet-style putters.

With 46 total events on the PGA TOUR and 47 winners (the Zurich Classic of New Orleans being a team event), a jarring 35 golfers used mallet putters en route to victory compared to just 12 who opted to play a blade, the last of which came at the 3M Open in July as Kurt Kitayama won using a Scotty Cameron Newport 2 Tour Prototype.

Now the numbers don’t stop there. All 10 of the top players in the Official World Golf Ranking now use mallet putters, thanks to a late-season putter switch by Ben Griffin.

"I actually looked a lot at the stats this year. I was 19th in Strokes Gained: Putting, and I believe I was the best blade putter on TOUR at No. 19, and all these guys ahead of me switched from blades to mallets," Griffin said after victory at the World Wide Technology Championship. "It was just something I thought about, what would happen if I used a mallet, and I felt like this was a good week for me to test it out.”

Good week indeed, as Griffin picked up his third victory of the season to join Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy as the only golfers to collect three or more trophies during the year. But what were the benefits of the mallet putter that Griffin was looking for that the blade couldn’t give him?

“He wanted to mallet for the forgiveness for the added benefit of the CG (center of gravity) to get a little bit more launch and consistency on speed,” James Holley, TaylorMade Tour putter rep who cares for five of the top 10 players in the world, told PGATOUR.COM.

To create this, a larger head was needed so the weight could be moved further from this CG and help raise the MOI (moment of inertia) for improved forgiveness. It’s something more difficult to replicate with a blade, with limits on style, shape and size.

“You have different shapes that you can do it with,” Holley added. “A blade is kind of a blade, a blade's been a blade forever since Karsten (Solheim) made the first Ping putter.”

Griffin’s switch saw him ditch the blade for a TaylorMade Spider Tour X putter. It’s a putter style that five of the top 10 in the world all use. It’s the same route that world No. 4 Tommy Fleetwood took in 2025, leading to his breakthrough on TOUR and becoming the FedExCup champion. But for Fleetwood, the mallet gave him a different advantage.

“The big thing with Tommy (Fleetwood) that was interesting is with the mallet and that bigger footprint, it soles a little bit more consistently for him on the ground, so it's a bigger footprint, it's got more of a flat spot,” Holley said. “So for him, he was able to nail that setup a little bit more easily week to week.”

When it came to Scheffler’s career-changing decision in 2024 to change from his blade to the mallet, it was less about the forgiveness and simplicity of the head (the team at TaylorMade actually tried to mimic the nature of how a blade putter swings by using the L-neck hosel), but all about alignment.

“This Spider putter is really easy for me to line up,” Scheffler said prior to his 2024 PLAYERS Championship victory. “I don't have to use the line on the ball. I line the putter up really well, and I line up in the middle of the face, and pretty much as simple as that.”

The added size and shape compared to the blade allowed Scheffler to use a more prominent sightline on the top of the putter head to line up the putter itself, instead of having to use a line on the ball.

Looking down the list of the world's top golfers, the highest-ranked that regularly uses a blade putter is Ludvig Åberg. The Swede uses an Odyssey White Hot Versa #1 putter and finished the year 86th in SG: Putting, but it's not to say blade putters still can't perform on the PGA TOUR. Harry Hall, who also uses Odyssey's #1 style putter (the wider O Works 1W), ranked first in Total Putting, Putting Average and Putts per Round on TOUR for 2025.

When asked about his keys to being a good putter, the Englishman was quick to reply, "I've got to keep them a secret."

Unless Hall looks to share his secrets, blade putters might be seen less and less on TOUR in the future.