If you've been playing golf for any length of time, you've probably done the same thing. You walk into your nearest golf shop and pick up a putter that looks good to your eye and helps you make a putt or two on the indoor astroturf practice green. A few minutes later, you leave with your wallet a couple hundred bucks lighter but with the hopes of finally being able to sink a few putts.
You probably didn't think a PGA Tour pro would do the same thing.
But that's exactly what Mark Calcavecchia did last week. He walked into an Edwin Watts store in West Palm Beach, Fla., and paid $256.18 for a Redwood Anser putter from Ping - one that he could have had for free from the company.
After a disappointing Honda Classic experience, where he paced off his longest putt made at 4 feet, 2 inches, he decided to start the PODS Championship with a new prototype putter that Ping had made for him. That prototype and the purchased Redwood were the two putters that came with him to Tampa.
"Thursday, I decided to whip out this new prototype Ping made me... that I made everything with Sunday when I played Old Marsh and practiced out there Tuesday. And then Thursday, when the bell rang it wasn't there," Calcavecchia said.
So, following a first-round 75, Calcavecchia didn't have much to lose. He put the Redwood in the bag for his second-round 67, third-round 62 and subsequent win on Sunday.
"I was on major putting slump," he said. "And we all know the story about the putter, the store bought putter, and it looked good to me.
"It's called a Ping Redwood, which is their milled version of their Anser, which Scotty Cameron and
everybody else in the world copies. But it looked good to me, and I figured something out. I guess it was Friday morning, when I was hitting some putts on the putting green, for some reason it dawned on me to pull more with my left hand. So then I kind of loosened up my right-hand grip and tried to putt basically left handed with my right hand just on the putter for guidance, and here I am."
The Redwood series, which came on the market in late 2006, are milled from 303 stainless steel. Three models are available - the Piper S, the Zing and the Anser, which Calcavecchia used. The putters got their name from Ping founder Karsten Solheim's home in Redwood City, Calif., where he made the first Ping putters.
"These putters are designed to be aesthetically pleasing to the eye and engineered to produce lower scores," said John Solheim, Ping's Chairman and CEO, when the company debuted the line in December. "All of the models have clean lines on them, which will help golfers line up their putts. The 100 percent machined heads enable us to ensure that the shape and the lines of each putter we produce are exactly as we designed them."
Apparently the looks of the putter helped Calcavecchia with his decision to play it. "I just kind of look at it and see which one looks less ugly to me," he said about choosing which putter he will use for a round. "It's basically what I putted with all of my career, just that it's an Anser."
The new putter helped Calcavecchia to finish first in putts per green in regulation (1.620) and third in putts per round (27.3) - in spite of taking 36 putts in the first round.
Calcavecchia said he plans to keep the Redwood in play.
"It earned its way for quite a while I think," he said. "Hopefully I can just keep with the same thoughts and feel that I had the last three days.
"It's earned bag time for a while even if it goes south. I know I like the putter, and I know I can putt with it, so that's about three quarters of the battle."
What about that Ping prototype putter, the one Calc used on Thursday?
"I will be sending it back," he said.
