Sometimes the best equipment switches are born out of desperation.
That's what made LPGA Championship winner Suzann Pettersen seek out a new putter earlier this week.
"For me, it was -- it couldn't get much worse," she said about her putting.
Her Tuesday pro-am partner, Tom Elliot, had a suggestion in the form of his Ping Udrainium Series Doc 15 putter.
"I looked at it and I was like, wow, this is doing exactly what I want it to do, and it's so simple, so I'll just take it," Pettersen said.
The results: An average of 28.5 putts per round and a major trophy.
"I've just been really feeling good with the putter this week," she explained. "So I mean, I could kind of see all the lines and it was just a matter of if you got the right pace or not."
Ping's line of Udrainium putters includes six different models - all of them fairly large. The bigger heads reduce twisting to help keep putts on line - plus, they're well marked to help with alignment. Each Udranium putter - including Pettersen's favorite, the Doc 15 - is machined aluminum with perimeter weighting. The putters were introduced to the market in 2005.
In her hands, Pettersen said, the Ping putter just felt good.
"I hardly change my equipment during the season. But I mean, if you feel good with something, you should go with the guts, so that's what I did," she said.
And as for Elliot, now without a putter?
"I did get him a new one," Pettersen promised, "because this one, it's so special."
