Every winning putter on the PGA Tour in 2025 (and the budget version of each)
Pros are paid to play whatever the brand pays them to play. You're not. So when you read "every winning putter on the PGA Tour in 2025" and your eye lands on a $650 Scotty Cameron, the only useful question is: what shape is it, and is there a version of that shape I can actually afford?
That's what this post is. The 2025 winning putters, sorted by shape (not by tournament), with the budget version of each.
Four shapes covered nearly the entire 2025 PGA Tour win column: Anser-style blades, Phantom-style mid-mallets, Spider-style high-MOI mallets, and L.A.B. zero-torque.
Brand counts: TaylorMade 15 wins, Scotty Cameron 12, Ping 7, L.A.B. 2.
Pick the shape that suits your stroke. The brand barely matters.
Three of the four shapes have a genuinely good budget version under $220. Zero-torque is the one category where the cheapest decent option is still around $350.
The actual question you should be asking
"What putter does Scottie Scheffler use" is a fun search but a useless one. He plays what TaylorMade pays him to play, and they fit it to his stroke at a level no high street fitting bay can match.
The useful question is: which shape did all the 2025 wins come from, what kind of stroke does each shape fit, and what's the cheapest decent version of that shape.
The answer is four shape categories. That's it. Find your shape, ignore the badge.
The 30-second toe-hang test
Before you buy anything, do this. Hold a putter you already own across two flat fingers, like a balance beam. Watch what the face does:
- Face points straight at the sky → face balanced. You probably want a mallet.
- Toe drops slightly toward the ground (around 30 degrees) → slight toe hang. You probably want a mid-mallet or a blade.
- Toe drops nearly straight down → strong toe hang. Classic blade.
Now check your stroke. Set up over a ball, putt one. Did the head move in a slight arc (face opens then closes), or straight back and through?
- Slight arc + slight toe hang → matched.
- Straight back, straight through + face balanced → matched.
- Strong arc + strong toe hang → matched.
- Anything else → mismatched, and that's quietly costing you putts.
Most amateurs have a slight arc and a face-balanced putter. Mismatch. Worth knowing before you spend anything.
What the 2025 winners played (and what to buy instead)
Eight 2025 PGA Tour winners and a smart budget swap for each. Prices are USD retail ballparks.
And honestly? All of these, tour spec and budget pick alike, are routinely cheaper on the secondhand market. Knock another 30 to 50% off whatever you see above on Golf Bidder, eBay or 2nd Swing. Putter heads don't go out of date.
A few patterns jump out. High-MOI mallets won the most because they're the most forgiving on off-centre strikes, and tour pros are putting on greens fast enough that miss-hits cost more than feel does. Anser blades held strong in the hands of pros with proper arc strokes. Phantom-style mid-mallets are the all-rounder. Zero-torque is the new thing that solves a specific problem (face manipulation under pressure) and isn't for everyone.
Four shapes covered nearly everything on the win column. Worth understanding each before you buy.
1. Anser-style blade
What it is: the original 1966 shape. Heel-toe weighted blade head, slight toe hang, sits up small. Looks classic.
Who won with it in 2025: Ryan Fox won twice using a counterbalanced Ping Anser 2D. Brian Campbell won twice using a PLD milled Anser 2 prototype. Honest, classic shape, still relevant after 60 years.
Stroke fit: slight to moderate arc. If your stroke has any arc at all, this is the shape.
Tour spec: Ping PLD Milled Anser 2, around $550 to $650.
Smart budget pick: Wilson Staff Infinite Buckingham, around $130. The Buckingham was the top performer in 2025 budget putter testing for short and medium range putts. The shape geometry is right where it needs to be. Shaft and grip aren't tour spec but the head is doing the work.
If you can stretch a bit: standard Ping Anser (non-PLD) at around $230 to $260. Same shape, less hand-finished.
2. Phantom-style mid-mallet
What it is: rounded mallet, sightline on top, moderate forgiveness. Slight toe hang on the smaller versions and face-balanced on the bigger ones.
Who won with it in 2025: Justin Rose (Phantom T-5), Justin Thomas (Phantom 5), and three other pros across different Phantom variants. Five wins from five different players. The all-rounder of the season.
Stroke fit: slight arc to mostly straight. The most flexible category.
Tour spec: Scotty Cameron Phantom 5 or T-5, around $450 to $500.
Smart budget pick: Cleveland HB Soft Premier #11, around $200 to $220. Properly forgiving mid-mallet shape, soft polymer insert, alignment is clean. Reviews consistently put it in the same conversation as putters costing two or three times more.
3. Spider-style high-MOI mallet
What it is: the big winged mallet. Very high MOI (forgiving on off-centre strikes), face balanced, modern alignment, distinctive look.
Who won with it in 2025: Tommy Fleetwood used a TaylorMade Spider Tour Black to win the FedEx Cup at the Tour Championship. Scottie Scheffler, Rory McIlroy and Robert MacIntyre all rotated Spider variants through the year. The Spider Tour Black family won 13 times in 2025, the most of any single putter model on the PGA Tour.
Stroke fit: straight back and through. If your face control gets twitchy under pressure, the high MOI is doing some of the work for you.
Tour spec: TaylorMade Spider Tour Black, around $350 to $400.
Smart budget pick: Odyssey White Hot OG 2-Ball, around $200. The original alignment-aid mallet. Big, forgiving footprint, classic feel from the White Hot insert. Holds up against modern mallets despite the design being decades old. The shape difference between $200 and $400 here is genuinely small.
If you want a closer Spider clone specifically: an older TaylorMade Spider GT secondhand sits around $150 to $200 on eBay or Golf Bidder. Same shape family, last-gen.
4. L.A.B. zero-torque
What it is: a putter designed so the head doesn't twist during the stroke even if you don't square the face up perfectly. Solves face manipulation under pressure.
Who won with it in 2025: J.J. Spaun won the US Open using one. Garrick Higgo won with the Adam-Scott-designed L.A.B. OZ.1i. Brian Harman also won with TaylorMade's own zero-torque Spider ZT, which uses similar physics. Zero-torque went from niche to a real category in one season.
Stroke fit: anyone whose face control falls apart under nerves. If you've ever lipped out a 4-footer because you tugged the face closed, this is the category to look at.
Tour spec: L.A.B. Golf OZ.1i (Adam Scott's design), around $499.
Smart budget pick: this is where I have to be honest. There isn't a true sub-$200 zero-torque putter at the moment. The cheapest functional one is the Odyssey Ai-One Square 2 Square, around $349. Below that, you're looking at no-name Amazon clones, and I wouldn't trust the milling.
If your budget is hard-capped under $200, skip this category and pick a high-MOI mallet from category 3. You'll get most of the same forgiveness.
Don't buy a zero-torque putter because pros are using them. Buy one because your face control under pressure is genuinely the thing costing you putts. Otherwise it's fashion.
What not to do
A few quick things that come up a lot:
- Don't buy a face-balanced mallet because it looks pro if your stroke has a clear arc. The Spider looks great on TV. It will fight your hands every putt if you're an arc putter.
- Don't pay tour spec money for a putter you haven't been fitted for. $130 in the right shape outscores $600 in the wrong shape, every time.
- Don't ignore the secondhand market. Scotty Phantoms from two seasons ago are routinely on Golf Bidder and 2nd Swing for half retail. The head shape hasn't changed.
- Don't worry about the year on the head. Putters don't go out of date. Brad Faxon used the same Bullseye for two decades.
So what should you actually do
Step 1: do the 30-second toe-hang test on your existing putter. Figure out your stroke shape. Step 2: pick the matching shape from the four above. Step 3: buy the budget version for now. If you genuinely outgrow it, upgrade later. If you don't, you've saved $400.
If you want to push further before spending anything, the club fitting on a budget guide covers how to get an honest set of specs without leaving the fitting bay with a $4,000 bag. And if you're already deep in the data side of practice, the Garmin R10 review is the practice partner side of the same setup.