Roles are reversed at TPC Scottsdale as Brooks Koepka looks to follow in Scottie Scheffler's footsteps at the WM Phoenix Open. Well, at least on the greens.

In eerily similar fashion, Scheffler’s time in Phoenix has mirrored that of Koepka – picking up his first PGA TOUR win and then adding a second shortly after – but tides have shifted, and it’s Koepka looking to match Scheffler’s game by using the same style of putter.

As Koepka returns to TPC Scottsdale for the first time since 2022, he’s made the switch to the TaylorMade Spider Tour X putter, the same design that Scheffler has dominated the golf world with for the last two years.

Koepka teed it up at the Farmers Insurance Open last week as part of the Returning Member Program. While he was happy with how the week went as a whole, one thing was not up to the standards of the five-time major champion: his putting.

The 35-year-old ranked dead last in Strokes Gained: Putting at Torrey Pines, losing over seven strokes to the field on the greens.

“It can't get worse, right?” Koepka said Sunday night, as he signed off from San Diego. Now, as he looks to drown out the rowdy crowds at TPC Scottsdale, Koepka joins a long line of players who have switched into the TaylorMade Spider putter.

Five of the top 10 players in the Official World Golf Ranking all use a variation of it, including world No. 1 Scheffler, whose switch to the Spider putter at the 2024 Arnold Palmer Invitational presented by Mastercard sparked a torrid run of form, culminating in his 20th PGA TOUR victory this past week at The American Express.

Koepka’s change to the mallet-style Spider putter comes after gaming his Scotty Cameron Teryllium Newport 2 blade consistently over the last decade. He did switch from the trusty blade for brief stints last year, testing out Scotty Cameron's T-5.5 and Fastback 1.5 models.

After the third round during Koepka’s return at Torrey, CBS golf analyst Colt Knost reported that Koepka spent many hours working at the Scotty Cameron studio in Carlsbad, California, with Paul Vizanko, director of Player Fitting and Development for Scotty Cameron, in an attempt to help his putting stroke for the final round.

“Trying to get the ball in the hole,” Koepka said somewhat sarcastically during his pre-tournament press conference in Phoenix, when asked about what he had been working on with the flatstick.

“Just really never felt comfortable over the ball. You've got to have everything squared up to the target," he added. "Just working on things like that. Real simple stuff, setup. Shoulders were open. My feet are always a little bit open, but just trying to minimize the lines crossing so much.

“And yeah, just tried to keep everything more consistent, the face, the path, everything.”

But on the eve of the “Greenest Show on Grass,” Koepka decided that an equipment change was needed, as well as vigorous work on his technique, and opted for the same TaylorMade Spider Tour X with the L-Neck that Scheffler uses.

The putter prides itself on working like a blade-style putter, but with the added benefits of a mallet. The forgiveness of a mallet putter is created thanks to the larger head and weighting, which is moved further from the face, to help raise the moment of inertia and keep the putter stable through the stroke.

But to Scheffler’s liking, the Spider Tour X also helps him be better aligned.

“This Spider putter is really easy for me to line up,” Scheffler said prior to his THE PLAYERS Championship victory in 2024. “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.”

With a fresh putter in hand, can Koepka now capture some of Scheffler's Spider senses?