The Open 2010: Tiger Woods changes putter to Revive His Open 2010 Championship Chances

Tiger Woods has changed putter for the second time in one week in a last-gasp bid to revive his Open 2010 Championship chances at St Andrews.

Golf equipment is never a story at a tournament — until it becomes a story.

Any time Tiger Woods makes an equipment change, gearheads around the world race to their computers and slam message boards and chat sites with opinions. No one's bag is scrutinized more closely than Tiger's.

But Woods's equipment change last week was huge not only because of what he did, but also when he did it.

The world's No. 1 player swapped out the Titleist Scotty Cameron putter he'd used to win 13 of his 14 major championships in favor of a Nike Method 001 — the week of the British Open!

 

At the start of the week Woods ditched the putter which has won him 13 of his 14 majors, including the past two Opens over the Old Course by eight and five shots, in favour of a Method model which he hoped would help him deal with the slower speed of the greens on the Old Course.

But after taking 99 putts in the first three rounds to lie 12 shots off the lead, held by South African Louis Oosthuizen, Woods abandoned the experiment and saw it pay instant dividends.

With his trusty Scotty Cameron putter, made by Titleist, the world No1 holed from seven feet on the first and five feet on the third for birdie, improving to five-under par and within 10 shots of Oosthuizen, due out with England's Paul Casey in the last group shortly after 2pm.

At address, the Tiger's putters look almost identical, right down to the single dot on the top flange. The Scotty Cameron putter is made from a single block of stainless steel and its face is smooth. The Nike Method 001 is also made from stainless steel, but it has grooves in the face that are partially filled with a polymer that are designed to get the ball rolling faster.

"[The ball] does come off faster with the new groove technology," Woods said before the start of the tournament. "It rolls the ball better and rolls it faster."

It was that faster roll that Woods wanted. He said that with the Nike putter, he didn't have to compensate as much on St. Andrews's slower greens.

Woods elected to go back to using his Scotty Cameron putter for the final round in St. Andrews. While statistically it was his best day on the greens — he took just 27 putts on Sunday, five fewer than in any of his previous three rounds — he didn't sound pleased about it.

"I couldn't build any momentum, wasn't making any putts today, and once I got it going just a little bit, I thought, I had back-to-back three-putts at 13 and 14," he said afterward.

The Open 2010: Tiger Woods changes putter again for final round.