Thomas has been watching Cameron Young's recent success on the greens with a Scotty Cameron Phantom 9.5R mallet, so he picked up his phone and asked for one just like it.

"I literally texted the [Scotty Cameron] guys and said, 'Just give me Cam's putter,'" Thomas said of the Phantom 9.5R he put in play at Quail Hollow, a near-replica of Young's wand. "I've been watching him make putts for a pretty good amount of time now, and I've always thought it looks really good."

The copycat experiment is paying off. Thomas ranks 11th in Strokes Gained: Putting and sits two off the lead after the second round. He says the toe hang and feel mirror putters he's gamed before, which made the switch an easy one.

"It's just so hard to putt well if you don't have confidence," Thomas said, "and so hard to have confidence unless you're seeing it go in more often."