By now, winning Champions Tour majors is a bit ho-hum for Rife. The putter manufacturer earned a third major title in 15 months Sunday when Fred Funk used a Barbados model to win the Jeld-Wen Tradition.
It was the seventh time a Champions Tour player has used a Rife putter to win this year - including Funk's win with a different Rife model (Mr. Beasley) at the MasterCard Championship in Hawaii.
During the final round, Funk sunk birdie putts on holes 3, 4 and 6 to take a sizable lead. He also sunk a tricky sidehill putt on the final hole after a rain delay to clinch the title.
Altogether, there were 21 Rife putters in play at the Jeld-Wen - four more than the next most popular putter. It was the 13th time the company has won the putter count on the Champions Tour in 2008.
On the LPGA Tour, Australian Katherine Hull used a Rife 2 Bar Hybrid Mallet to win the CN Canadian Women's Open. Hull has used a Rife putter since last year, when the company's tour rep, Scott Behle, introduced her to the line.
SMALLER SPIDER WORKS FOR LAIRD: Scotsman Martin Laird was first in putts per round (26.8) and first in putts per green in regulation (1.560) at the Wyndham Championship.
Laird, who finished in a tie for fourth in Greensboro, used TaylorMade's Itsy Bitsy Spider, a smaller version of its popular Rossa Monza Spider putter, for the week. It was the first time he'd used the putter for all four rounds of a tournament, although he had used the larger Spider for a handful of tournaments during the season.
"Nice off week last week to kind of recharge and my putter, I switched to the new putter the last two rounds of Reno and... I made everything," he said.
It matched Laird's best PGA Tour finish of the season. He also tied for fourth at the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open, where he first put the Spider putter in play.
GRIPS DOMINATE NATIONWIDE: Golf Pride grips are often the grip of choice on the PGA Tour. But it's less common to think about the grips used on other tours. Especially this week, Golf Pride dominated on the Nationwide Tour.
Ninety percent of the field used some variety of Golf Pride grip - 92 players in the 156-person field choose Tour Velvet and 13 picked the brightly colored New Decade MultiCompound hybrid grip.
"We are pleased to see that Golf Pride is the No. 1 grip for golfers on the Nationwide Tour, as well as on the PGA Tour and other professional tours globally," said Jeff Fiorini, general manager for Eaton's Golf Grip Division.
