Brooks Koepka has always had one of the most interesting putting techniques in golf. It's a homegrown technique that he's refined over the years to obvious success. It flies under the radar somewhat because people focus on unique golf swings more than unique putting strokes, but Brooks' is top tier.
What, specifically, is so unique?
Well, first there's his stance. Brooks stands pretty open to the target line at setup, similar to Jack Nicklaus.
You can see it here.
Koepka's longtime putting coach, Jeff Pierce, explains that standing open to the target line has always felt more natural to Brooks, who prefers a fade shot shape on full shots, which also requires a more open stance. On the green Brooks likes the feeling, but the key part, Pierce says, is making sure his shoulders are square to his putter.
"His feet and lower half have always been significantly more open through the bag, but his upper body is reasonably square," Pierce explains. "We keep the upper body pretty square, but the lower body being open and not moving is definitely just a natural thing to him."
So that's not really new or changing, but what Brooks is changing is the way he sets up the putter.
Brooks tends to set the ball off the toe of the putter, another uniqueness that simply fit his eye.
But he and Jeff worked hard to match all this up with ball position, and other things, which is why Brooks would impact the ball in the middle of his putter face. Here's his wear mark for proof.
Orlando Ramirez
But recently Brooks found that off-the-toe setup position was creating problems, as he spoke about ahead of the 2026 Players Championship.
"I just got into a bunch of bad habits," Koepka explained. "I've always played [the ball] off the toe, and some of those habits were created just to fix that, to go hit it off the center."
The issue, Brooks explained, was that because he started the ball off the toe, he started "swaying" towards the ball and using his hands to rotate the putterface aggressively to get the ball back off the center. They were compensations layering on top of each other, which causes consistency issues.
"The consistency of speed hasn't been there. I felt like every time I hit a good putt, it just kind of hit the lip or would miss it by a foot and, you know, you don't want to ever question what's going on. But when you feel like you did something right and you look up and it's not even close, you know that there's a problem."
So in came a new putter, paired with some technical changes.
- The longer line on his new TaylorMade Spider X made it easier to address the ball more off the center, Brooks explained. He still address the ball on the toe, but less so than before (and getting better).
- This change, in turn, complemented his technical work. He worked on reducing his hand action, and noticed less face rotation with the Spider X.
Will it work? Well, I'm on record calling Brooks a golf genius, so you can be skeptical. But I won't be surprised one bit if it does.