I often find my mind wandering during the dog days of the golf season. Golf is still being played but the time between the end of the Open Championship and the start of the FedEx Cup playoffs feels a little empty.
How about we fill our unused mental space with a little debate?
The question I’ve been mulling over and I now put to you is simple: Should the TaylorMade Spider be considered a classic putter design?
Not just a “good” design but that it’s an all-time classic design. Was the creation of the Spider so significant that we can separate putter design into pre-Spider and post-Spider categories?
There is no denying that the TaylorMade Spider is a hot putter on professional tours and has been for the past few years.
Numerous amateurs are playing the Spider. At this very moment, it is also in quite a few of our bags. Yes, I said “our bags”. Even a putter freak like me has a Spider (or two) in the gamer rotation.
You can’t dispute the popularity of the TaylorMade Spider but has it reached truly iconic status?
Think of it this way: if there was a Mount Rushmore for putters, would the TaylorMade Spider be one of the four faces carved into the rock?
The TaylorMade Spider’s origin story
The first incarnation of the TaylorMade Spider was produced in 2008. The TaylorMade Rossa Monza Spider was a significant departure from other mallet putters in the marketplace, both in its design and its looks.
Though the practice is commonplace these days, building a putter that puts performance before looks was rare. When putter designers did explore radically new designs, the response from the golf consumer was not universally positive.
So why was the Spider more successful?
To put it simply, the design was groundbreaking. Compared to the other putters in the 2008 marketplace, the Spider was a whole different animal. Many of the design elements that originated with Spider now are core technologies of modern putter design.
Here are some of the 2008 Rossa Monza Spider’s key innovations:
- Multi-material construction
- Extreme perimeter weighting
- Very high-MOI mallet design
- Large alignment features
- Oversized mallet head
These days, nearly every putter from every company has at least one element that originated in the Rossa Monza Spider.
More importantly, the Spider started the paradigm shift in what was “acceptable” in putter appearance. Golfers started to warm to the idea that the performance of the putter could be more important than its looks.
Additionally, I don’t think I’m going out on a limb by saying the Spider Tour with the slant neck is the putter that started the player migration from blades to mallets.
For TaylorMade, the success (and public acceptance) of the Spider design plan ensured they would continue to refine the plan over the subsequent two decades.
Some of the iterations of the Spider were not spectacular but others have become staples. The Spider Tour design is a prime example of how TaylorMade kept refining the Spider design.
The Rossa Monza Spider was the spark of inspiration and the Spider Tour fanned that flame.
Covertly dominant on the PGA Tour
What is a little surprising is that it’s only in recent years that folks are noticing just how successful the Spider has been on professional tours. Spoiler, it’s been really successful.
Since 2008, more than 100 PGA Tour events have been won with Spider putters. Jason Day and Dustin Johnson recorded some of the early wins with the original red Spider Tours. DJ also used a Spider Tour to win the Masters in 2020.
The Spider was winning tournaments but it did so without much fanfare. Perhaps folks still considered the Spider wins to be flukes. After all, TaylorMade is a driver company, not a putter company. Right?
Everyone noticed the Spider’s wins in 2024 and 2025.
During that two-year stretch, Spider putters won 28 PGA Tour events, two Players Championships and four majors.
(By the way, Spider putters also scored wins in the first five of six tournaments in 2026.)
Suddenly, the highest of high-profile golfers were using TaylorMade Spiders and the public witnessed Spiders recording win after win. In the hands of Rory McIlroy and Scottie Scheffler, the Spider became the hottest putter in golf.
The Scheffler story was especially interesting. Before adopting the Spider, Scheffler was one of the best ball strikers in the world but his putter was costing him strokes every week. Prior to the Spider, Scheffler would lead the field in Strokes Gained: Tee to Green and then lose tournaments because of his putting.
In 2023, his Strokes Gained: Putting rank was 162nd. After switching to the Spider (and starting to work with Phil Kenyon), he jumped to the top 25 in putting. In 2025, he finished 22nd in putting.
I can’t remember another singular golf equipment change that had the same level of impact.
Arachnophilia takes the golf world by storm
During those tournaments, we all saw in real time what a putter change to a Spider could accomplish. In general, amateur golfers have no business playing the same clubs that pros play. However, putters may be the exception.
How could anyone witness Scheffler’s turnaround and not wonder if changing to a Spider would improve their putting?
Spider sales went through the roof. In my weekly play group, it is not uncommon for all four of us to have Spider putters. How many of your friends now play Spiders?
Suddenly, the company that was long renowned for their drivers was expanding their presence in the putter marketplace. In other words, TaylorMade was selling a shitload of Spiders.
TaylorMade does not publicize their sales numbers so I asked my research assistant ChatGPT to estimate how many Spider putters TaylorMade sold in 2025.
The moderate-confidence estimate that Chat came up with was 180,000–200,000, equating to a retail value of approximately $80 million. As I said, that was an AI guess but if that number is remotely good, we are talking about an industry-leading number of putters for a single putter family.
Odyssey is the Tour and retail powerhouse. They sell more putters than TaylorMade and have more putters on professional tours. However, no single Odyssey putter family matches the Spider’s presence. Odyssey wins the count as a brand but the Spider wins as a model family.
Here is an especially interesting nugget of information that ChatGPT reported:
“No other modern mallet family has approached the Spider’s sustained winning record. While the PING Anser (blade family) almost certainly has more total PGA Tour victories over its nearly 60-year history, among modern putter families introduced in the last 20 years, the Spider is the clear benchmark.”
Is the Spider a Mount Rushmore putter?
My version of the Mount Rushmore of Putters features the PING Anser, Odyssey 2-Ball, Wilson 8802 and the TaylorMade Spider. Not only have all four of these designs stood the playability test of time but they all forever changed the way that putters are created following their releases.
The Spider design has been around for nearly 20 years and currently is the hottest it has ever been.
Most golf products are the hottest at their release and then gradually cool off. For the Spider, it’s the opposite. The smouldering ember of the Spider design has gotten brighter and brighter since 2008, finally going supernova in 2026. I don’t foresee it cooling off any time soon.
I’d say that it deserves a spot on the mountain.
What do you think? Do you agree with my four choices? If not, what four putters would you pick?
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