Tommy Fleetwood switches into a new putter at the RBC Heritage

They say don't mess with a good thing, and that's particularly the case with putters: a club pros are notoriously hesitant to change even if they're playing poorly.

This is part of the reason TaylorMade has had so much success with its Spider putter range since its introduction in the late 2000s. 

Pros switch into it and very rarely take it back out of the bag again, as evidenced by the fact that three of the world's top four players currently game it and have done so for a while. 

With Rory McIlroy's win at The Masters last week, the Spider has brought its tally of Masters wins to four out of the last seven tournaments, with additional wins in the hands of Sergio Garcia and Dustin Johnson for good measure.

Even so, TaylorMade have judged that it's about time for the Spider to get a bit of a refresh, with some slick looking new variants filtering their way onto the brand's tour truck over the last month or so. 

The most obvious change is to the colour scheme, with a departure from the navy blue sole plate used by Scottie Scheffler and McIlroy into a menacing black offset by neon blue.

Tthe new models were snapped on the practice green at this week's RBC Heritage by equipment insiders Jack Hirsh and Alistair Cameron. 

Cameron later confirmed that Tommy Fleetwood has put the new model in the bag this week, complete with the updated alignment aid that he's recently adopted.

The new Spider line is also notable because it ushers in a brand new putter shape for the Spider family: a forked mallet known as the Spider F. A new variant of the Spider V, a model more aimed at capturing former blade putters and briefly used by Collin Morikawa, is also apparently on the way.

As part of his tinkering, Fleetwood was snapped testing the Spider F in the lead-up to the Texas Open, and indeed it's already made it's way into play on tour in the bag of Pierceson Coody.

It seems likely we'll hear more about the new putters as the week progresses, and we'll be sure to update this space with whatever we learn.