Players 2026: Jacob Bridgeman shares the unusual practice putting routine that has him in contention again
Jacob Bridgeman charged into contention at TPC Sawgrass with a Friday 68, giving him a formidable begin in his Players Championship debut. But in the event you’ve been watching the PGA Tour this season, seeing the 26-year-old’s identify on the leaderboard is nothing new. Neither is how he obtained there.
Bridgeman gained greater than three strokes on the greens on Friday to guide the discipline, and he is second in the event in strokes gained/putting by 36 holes. He additionally ranks second on tour in that stat for the season, one in which he claimed his first PGA Tour title at Riviera.
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So how does Bridgeman groove the putting stroke that presently has him third in the FedEx Cup factors record? The reply might shock you. In reality, it stunned a bunch of Clemson golfers earlier this week. Bridgeman was enjoying a practice spherical in entrance of some younger males from his alma mater when one golfer requested about the blade putter in his bag.
“I practice like 20 minutes a day with a blade probably,” Bridgeman says in the video. “I do my stroke stuff, short putts, and then when I put the spaceship in, it feels like I can’t miss.”
The “spaceship” is Bridgeman’s TaylorMade Spider Tour that he used to win the Genesis Invitational. As he explains in the video, he finds putting with the face-balanced mallet simpler than a blade—one thing that’s been a development on the PGA Tour of late—so he challenges himself with the blade that has extra toe grasp in practice.
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“The more toe hang you have, the harder it is to keep the putter straight,” Bridgeman says. And when he goes again to the mallet, “it’s so smooth.” You can watch his full clarification for this from :20 to 1:02 in the following video:
Interesting. As Bridgeman additionally says, I’ve heard about doing this from Carson Young. And that Tiger Woods used to do one thing comparable utilizing an old-school Bullseye putter in practice. It’s much like utilizing the gate drill (one thing Tiger additionally makes use of) or putting to a smaller gap in order to sharpen your accuracy.
In any occasion, it actually appears to work for Bridgeman. And chances are you’ll even discover him practising with that blade putter this weekend at TPC Sawgrass. He and his caddie simply have to verify to take it out of the bag earlier than he tees off.
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