[PHOTO: Ben Jared]
Earlier this month, Lucas Glover suggested the PGA Tour should ban the much-talked-about AimPoint method of reading greens to speed up play. On Tuesday, it was Collin Morikawa’s turn to take aim at his fellow major champion. With his tongue (somewhat) in cheek.
“AimPoint, statistically, hasn’t helped anybody make more putts since its inception on the PGA Tour,” Glover said on his SiriusXM PGA Tour Radio show. “Statistics have beared that out. It’s also kind of rude to be up near the hole stomping around where the break is in your feet. It needs to be banned. It takes forever.”
As you can probably guess, Glover doesn’t use AimPoint. But he does use a long putter, and Morikawa couldn’t resist “throwing shade” over that in response to his comments in his press conference ahead of this week’s Genesis Invitational.
“I have nothing against Lucas, but if we’re banning AimPoint I think we should ban long putters as well,” Morikawa said with a chuckle. “I don’t know. I guess no one has said it, right? Like let’s just – look, AimPoint does take longer if you’re not doing it properly, right, if you’re not doing it when other players are reading their putts. I think there’s a respect issue. I think some players might get a little bit too close to the hole and I get that. When you get too close to the hole when someone else is putting, yeah, like I don’t want my line and my putt to go over someone else’s foot and their marks. I mean, are you going to tell other players not to walk around the hole when we’re picking up putts? From my perspective, AimPoint has 1,000 percent helped me.”
There was a jokey tone in there, but that was also a bit of a retaliation. You come after my thing and I’ll go after yours. Anyway, have a look at Morikawa’s response:
Collin Morikawa reacts to the suggestion AimPoint should be banned: 'If we're banning AimPoint I think we should ban long putters as well' pic.twitter.com/GC4W3UZw8d
— Golfweek (@golfweek) February 12, 2025
Moments later, he was asked a couple follow-up questions on the topic.
Q. What’s your beef with the long putter?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: Well, I mean, I’m just throwing shade back at my AimPoint guys. I’m protecting my AimPoint guys, right? There’s guys that long putt and have AimPoint. I don’t have any beef. I don’t have anything wrong with putting like that, I just – I had to protect my AimPoint guys.
Q. It doesn’t do anything with pace of play?
COLLIN MORIKAWA: What, the long putter? No, no. But, you know, there’s some type of anchoring with like – it’s different.
There are people who think today’s PGA Tour pros are too friendly with each other, but that’s a pretty sharp, random dagger. These guys should all keep their heads on a swivel, because it’s still a dog-eat-dog world out there.
