Lucas Glover wants the PGA Tour to ban AimPoint.
Collin Morikawa says not so fast.
Speaking to reporters on Tuesday at the Genesis Invitational at Torrey Pines, Morikawa defended the popular green-reading method, which he uses, while cheekily countering Glover’s sentiment.
“I have nothing against Lucas, but if we’re banning AimPoint, I think we should ban long putters as well,” Morikawa said with a big smile, eliciting some laughter from inside the interview room. “I don’t know. I guess no one has said it, right?”
Glover, who putts with a broomstick, commented on slow play a couple weeks ago on his PGA Tour SiriusXM Radio show, and offered eight solutions to speed up rounds, including getting rid of AimPoint, which involves players using both their feet to feel the slope of the green and then using your fingers and eyes to determine what line to start the putt on.
“Statistically, [AimPoint] hasn’t helped anybody make more putts since its inception on the PGA Tour. Statistics have borne that out,” Glover said. “It’s also kind of rude to be up near the hole, stomping around figuring out where the break is in your feet. It needs to be banned. It takes forever.”
Morikawa understands Glover’s concern about spike marks around the hole, and he admits that if done improperly or untimely, AimPoint can take longer. But he fully disagrees that AimPoint is not helpful, and he went on to provide a thoughtful defense of the system.
“From my perspective, AimPoint has 1,000 percent helped me,” Morikawa said. “I listen to the announcers sometimes during play, and they say, ‘Why would you AimPoint this, this and that?’ It gets a basis of how I read a putt and how I start my lines. It’s just like reading something from behind the hole or behind the ball, that’s how I’m getting my general read for that. I don’t think people understand how AimPoint works to really say this is right or wrong.
“Does it slow down play? I think there are some players that maybe do it in the wrong spots. And sometimes, look, I’ll admit it, maybe I can’t get in when I want to, so it adds a couple more seconds. But I know that, and I’m aware of that. I think players need to be aware if they’re slow or not, right? Like let people know who is slow and do something about it, right?”
Which brings Morikawa to his ideas for solving the slow-play conundrum. Morikawa pointed to the LPGA’s recent changes to its pace-of-play policy, which is less forgiving as it pertains to penalties, as a model for improving the PGA Tour’s sluggish pace.
In Morikawa’s opinion, not enough slow PGA Tour players are being fined or penalized. The last slow-play penalty in an official PGA Tour event? The team of Brian Campbell and Miguel Angel Carballo at the 2017 Zurich Classic.
“It’s just like the NBA, like the technicals, right?” Morikawa said. “Some guys are OK with getting fined every week for T’s. If guys are OK getting technicals and getting penalties out here on Tour because they’re slow, so be it.”
But if that’s the case, Morikawa wouldn’t mind those violators being publicly exposed.
“It’s not going to be that bad if you let a list out,” Morikawa said.
Other than that, Morikawa says, golf is just inherently slow – and banning AimPoint definitely isn’t going to change that.
So, what does he have against long putters? Nothing, he was just “throwing shade” back at Glover.
“I’m protecting my AimPoint guys, right?” Morikawa answered. “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 had to protect my AimPoint guys.”
Is that all?
“But, you know, there’s some type of anchoring with like…” Morikawa added, while using his hands to imitate using a broomstick. He then paused briefly before wrapping up the thought: “It’s different.”
Another big smile.
