Michael Thorbjornsen stood over a 26-foot birdie putt on the 72nd hole of the final Rocket Classic with a one-shot lead and no reason to be aggressive. He rolled it in anyway. "Perfect pace, perfect read," he said afterwards — five words that describe both the putt and the two-year project that made it possible.
The putt capped a bogey-free 7-under 63, the lowest round of his PGA Tour career, and delivered an 18-under 262 total and a two-shot win over Xander Schauffele at Detroit Golf Club. It was Thorbjornsen's first PGA Tour title, won in the eighth and final playing of the event, and it came from four shots back of Davis Riley's 54-hole lead.
Here's the part that gets overlooked: Thorbjornsen didn't win because he suddenly started making everything. He won because he changed putters this season — and the change he made says something specific and useful about how putting strokes actually work.
From Wellesley to Winner: Who Is Michael Thorbjornsen?
If the name felt familiar on Sunday, there's a reason. Thorbjornsen, 24, from Wellesley, Massachusetts, has been on the radar since he won the 2018 U.S. Junior Amateur. In 2022, still an amateur at Stanford, he finished solo fourth at the Travelers Championship at 15-under — one of the best amateur performances on Tour this century, and the first time since 2000 an amateur cracked the top 10 at a regular Tour event with a field that strong.
He finished four shots behind the winner that week. The winner was Xander Schauffele.
Four years later, at Detroit Golf Club, the two finished in exactly the same order — reversed. Thorbjornsen won by two; Schauffele was the man four years earlier and the runner-up this time.
In between, Thorbjornsen topped the PGA Tour University rankings at No. 1 to earn his card, turned professional at the 2024 Travelers — the same course where he'd announced himself — and spent two seasons learning what most young players learn the hard way: that being long enough (he averages 313 yards off the tee) and good enough gets you into contention, and something else entirely gets you across the line.
The Putter Switch That Set Up the Win
Thorbjornsen has played a TaylorMade Spider putter for eight years. That part didn't change. What changed this season was which Spider — and specifically, which hosel.
He began his PGA Tour career with a Spider Tour Short Slant. Earlier this season he moved to the Spider Tour X Black in the double bend configuration. To a casual eye that's the same putter in a different finish. Mechanically, it's close to the opposite club.
The Putter: TaylorMade Spider Tour X Black (Double Bend)
| Model | TaylorMade Spider Tour X Black, double bend hosel |
| Length | 35.5 inches |
| Loft | 2° |
| Lie | 72° |
| Head weight | 534g |
| Swingweight | E5 |
| Insert | 80/20 Pure Roll |
| Grip | Golf Pride MCC (standard) |
Two numbers there are worth pausing on. The 35.5-inch length is longer than the 34 inches most golfers buy off the rack, and the 534-gram head is heavy even by modern mallet standards. Together they produce a putter that resists being manipulated by the hands — it wants to swing itself.
His TaylorMade rep framed the switch in terms of the player rather than the club: "He's gone from a talented putter to more of a student of the game."
Double Bend vs Short Slant: What Actually Changed
This is the part worth understanding, because it applies to your putter as much as his.
A putter's hosel — how the shaft joins the head — determines how the face behaves during the stroke:
- Short slant (his old setup): produces roughly 30° of toe hang. Balance the shaft on your finger and the toe droops toward the ground. This design wants to rotate. It suits a golfer whose stroke arcs — in-to-square-to-in — and who likes feeling the putter release through the ball.
- Double bend (his new setup): produces a face-balanced head. Balance it on your finger and the face points at the sky. It resists rotation, and it suits a golfer whose stroke runs straighter back and straighter through.
So Thorbjornsen didn't upgrade to a newer model. He moved from a putter built to rotate to a putter built to resist rotating — which means he, or his coach, concluded that his stroke had become straighter and that the equipment was no longer matching it.
That's the "student of the game" comment in concrete terms. He measured what his stroke actually did, and changed the tool to fit it, rather than fighting the tool.
How to Tell Which Hosel Your Stroke Wants
You can run a rough version of this diagnosis at home in about ten minutes. It's the most useful thing in this article, and it costs nothing.
1. Balance your current putter
Rest the shaft across your index finger about halfway up the grip and let it settle.
- Face points at the ceiling → face-balanced (double bend or similar)
- Toe droops toward the floor → toe hang (slant, plumber's neck, flow neck)
- Toe hangs straight down → maximum toe hang, built for a strongly arcing stroke
Now you know what your putter is asking your stroke to do.
2. Find out what your stroke actually does
Lay something straight on the ground just outside your ball — an alignment stick, a broom handle, the edge of a practice mat — running along your target line. Make ten strokes at normal length while watching the putter head relative to that straight edge.
If the head stays close to the line and the face stays square to it, your stroke is straight, and a face-balanced head will fight you less. If the head moves noticeably inside on the backswing and the face opens and closes through the ball, your stroke arcs, and toe hang will feel more natural.
Most golfers arc more than they think. A few — Thorbjornsen now among them — genuinely don't.
3. Test with pace, not just line
Here's the step most people skip. Mismatched equipment usually shows up first as inconsistent distance, not direction, because a face that's rotating unpredictably delivers unpredictable energy. Hit ten putts to the same target and note the spread of where they finish. Then borrow a putter with the opposite hosel and do it again.
The one that produces a tighter distance cluster is the one that matches your stroke — regardless of which looks better behind the ball.
This test only works on a surface that rolls the same way every time. On carpet, or on a mat with seams and ripples, the surface adds noise that swamps the signal you're testing for. A true-rolling, tour-speed surface is what makes the ten-putt spread mean something.
The Chip-In at 12 and the Putt at 18
Thorbjornsen's winning nine is a useful lesson in what "short game" actually means, because he closed it out with both halves.
He birdied the 10th from six feet, then chipped in from 35 feet at the 12th — not a putt, a hole-out from off the surface — which turned a good round into a winning one. He added a two-footer at the 14th to take the lead, a six-footer at the 15th, and then the 26-foot putt at the last. Five birdies in the final nine, a back-nine 30, and not a single dropped shot all day.
Chip in from 35, then putt in from 26. Those are two different skills, played from two different lies, and they're the two skills that decide most rounds — professional or otherwise. He also led the entire field in greens in regulation for the week and ranked fourth in strokes gained off the tee, which is the unglamorous foundation underneath the highlight reel: he was in position all week, and the short game finished it.
Practice the Thorbjornsen Finish at Home
You can't replicate 313-yard drives in a living room. You can replicate everything that happened from 35 feet in.
The 26-Footer Drill
"Perfect pace, perfect read" is a pace statement first. Read only matters if the speed is right, because speed determines how much a putt breaks.
Set a target and hit ten putts from roughly 25 feet with one goal: finish every ball within a two-foot circle beyond the hole — never short. Track how many of the ten land in the zone. Repeat until you're at seven or better. You're calibrating distance, not chasing makes, and a firm, true surface is the only way to build that feel reliably indoors.
The Hosel Match Test
Run the three-step diagnosis above properly. Ten putts, one target, measure the distance spread. Do it once a season — strokes drift, and the putter that fitted you two years ago may be fighting you now. That's precisely what happened to Thorbjornsen.
Chip, Then Putt
Thorbjornsen's back nine was a chip-in followed by a made putt. Practice them the way you use them — together. Chip one ball toward a target, then putt out whatever you're left with. No resets, no second attempts. It's the sequence that actually occurs on the course, and practising the two skills in isolation is why so many golfers are competent at both and poor at the transition.
The Chiputt Tour-Grade Putting Mat ships with a complimentary dual-hole chipping mat for exactly this reason — you can chip and putt in one continuous sequence without rebuilding your setup between reps.
What's Next for Michael Thorbjornsen
The timing of this win matters more than a first title normally would. Thorbjornsen arrived in Detroit hovering around the top-70 FedExCup cut line — the number that decides who plays the postseason at all. A win doesn't just nudge you up that list; it vaults you clear of it, with full status and a very different set of options for the rest of the season.
The Wyndham Championship (August 6–9) is the last regular-season event before the playoffs begin, and the three-leg run to East Lake doubles as Presidents Cup qualifying, with U.S. automatic spots closing after the BMW Championship on August 23. A player who was playing for his card in July is now playing for considerably more in August.
For a 24-year-old who finished fourth at a Tour event as an amateur, went to Stanford, topped PGA Tour University and then spent two seasons learning to close, the shape of the story is familiar. What's instructive is the mechanism. He didn't find something. He measured what his stroke was doing, matched his equipment to it, and then trusted it from 26 feet with a tournament on the line.
Want to Roll It Like Thorbjornsen?
The 26-footer at the last wasn't luck, and it wasn't a hot week with the putter. It was a stroke that had been diagnosed, matched to the right equipment, and rehearsed until pace became instinct.
The Chiputt Tour-Grade Putting Mat gives you a true-rolling, tour-speed surface to run the drills above — distance-control ladders, the hosel match test, and the chip-then-putt sequence that won the final Rocket Classic.
Working on longer lag putts? Add the Chiputt Mat Extender and practise from the distances where pace, not line, decides the outcome.
For more on how a tour-level stroke is built, read our breakdown of how Cameron Young putts.
Shop the Chiputt Putting Mat →
About Chiputt Golf
Chiputt Golf makes tour-grade putting mats and chipping mats designed for serious golfers who want to practice with purpose. Our products are used by golfers in over 25 countries and are engineered to replicate the speed and feel of championship greens. Learn more at thechiputt.com.
Sources: ESPN, PGA TOUR, Golf.com, Today's Golfer.
