Rico Hoey’s season on the PGA Tour has been transformed by a putter change.
The 30-year-old second-year pro from Southern Cal produced just two top-10 finishes in his first 24 starts this season. But after finishing 106th in the FedEx Cup regular season and missing the playoffs, Hoey began practicing with a long putter, which he inserted in the bag at the first FedEx Cup Fall event in Napa. In four starts, he’s racked up three top-10s, including a runner up at the Bank of Utah Championship. That finish locked up his Tour card for 2026.
“I did not expect this quick of a return, especially finishing second now,” Hoey said after shooting 67 on Sunday at Black Desert Golf Course in Ivins, Utah. “It’s been kind of a rough season for me with putting. I’ve always just been a great ball-striker and I feel like I drive the ball great, but just putting-wise has always been too streaky. This year I just didn’t make enough putts.”
Hoey worked with putting coach Marcus Potter and his caddie Bryan Martin after another horrible putting display at the Wyndham Championship.
“We asked like Titleist and all these other companies to send broomsticks and I show up to the house and there it is, so I’m like, I didn’t think it was that bad, but I tried it out during that month off,” he recalled. “I ended up breaking two course records with it within the first two weeks. I’m like, all right, I think this is it. It’s been great. It’s been good to me. Just going to keep working hard with it. There are some things I need to keep working on, but, yeah, it’s been great.”
As PGA Tour.com’s Sean Martin pointed out ahead of the change, “Hoey may be the best ballstriker not named Scottie Scheffler.” He ranks first in total driving, greens in regulation, second in SG: Off the Tee. He ranked behind only Scheffler and Collin Morikawa in SG: Tee-to-Green. But that superlative ballstriking was wasted because he ranked last in SG: Putting, losing more than one stroke on the greens. As Martin put it, “imagine if this guy could putt.”
Hoey ranked 128th out of 132 players in the field in the first round in Utah, losing nearly four strokes on the green but the broomstick earned positive strokes the next three rounds and he finished 38th in SGP. His latest strong finish, which followed T-4 at the Baycurrent Classic and T-9 at the Procore Championship, lifted him to No. 61 in the FedEx Cup Fall and with a legit shot of earning two starts into signature events through the AON Next 10, which awards Nos. 51-60 with starts at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am and Genesis Invitational.
Watch out for Hoey to keep doing damage and work his way into the winner’s circle if the long putter remains the game-changer it’s been for him this fall.
