Equipment Insider: Mahan's soft putter, Perry's new wedge

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Each week in the Equipment Insider, Adam Barr -- PGATOUR.COM's equipment columnist -- will provide breaking news, notes and analysis focused on PGA TOUR players. Adam will also appear in video segments for PGATOUR.COM.

Check out more of Adam Barr's equipment coverage at AdamBarrGolfGearGuide.com.

Video: In the Bag

What do players carry when they head out on TOUR? We take an inside look at the adjustments they make to their clubs ... and they show us other things (ball markers, training aids) that make their tools of the trade unique. Archive: In the Bag MORE IN THE BAGS Phil Mickelson Tim Clark Zach Johnson

Karma must mean something. When he was in Phoenix for the Waste Management Phoenix Open, Hunter Mahan stopped by Ping headquarters and bought lunch for the people who design and make his golf clubs. Back at his day job, he played 44 straight holes without a bogey at TPC Scottsdale and notched his second career PGA TOUR win.

In the bag were Ping S57 irons, a better-player model; they helped Mahan lead the field in greens in regulation. Even though the shape is largely blade-like, there's a small cavity in the back and a hefty tungsten toe weight. Both those features help the club resist twisting, Ping engineers say.

Ping iWi D6 putter

Tungsten played a role in Mahan's driver as well, a Rapture V2. Tungsten weight pads on the outside drag the weight low and back, away from the face. The design combines forgiveness with high launch and low spin, the modern holy grails of the tee ball, Ping says.

Mahan putted with an iWi D6 putter, which has a steel face backed by an elastomer layer, providing a certain measure of click tempered by a softer feel. The iWi line also comes with changeable heel and toe weights to allow players to customize their feel.

Rickie Fowler has flown pretty high pretty early -- two top-10s in six starts -- but now he'll learn how TOUR pros sometimes get second-guessed. Fowler obviously thought long and hard before deciding to lay up on the 15th, the 69th hole of the Waste Management Phoenix Open, when he was a shot back.

But it's not like he didn't have the club for the distance. After the round, Fowler politely turned aside a reporter's suggestion that the shot dropped into an unfortunate gap between his 3-wood and his longest hybrid.

"I also carry a 4-iron," Fowler said. "I carry two hybrids. So it was actually going to be either a smooth 4-iron or kind of just a soft 20-degree hybrid. I kind of told myself that I didn't really want to go for it unless I had about a 5-iron in, which I would feel more comfortable hitting it to that pin with the pin being in the front."

Fowler's plan was to get within 80 yards and get up and down for birdie, then take his chances on 16 and 17, both of which he played reasonably well the first three rounds (a birdie, a bogey, and four pars).

Sometimes, even with 14 tools in the box, the best one to use is your brain.

• Both Mahan and Fowler played Titleist Pro V1x golf balls.

Perry

• Can't wait to see what kind of shots Kenny Perry will be hitting around the green. He put a new TaylorMade wedge in the bag at Phoenix -- 64 degrees of loft (!), ground the way Kenny likes it, with lots of relief off the heel. The lies in Scottsdale can be mighty tight; Perry wants to get under to maximize control of trajectory and spin. I wonder ... where else can the greenside lies get tight? Little town on the Savannah River in eastern Georgia. Knowing Perry's competitive fire as we do, it's a good bet Augusta National has been crossing his mind after he came so close to a Green Jacket last year.

• We hear a lot about how pros want feedback out of their grips, so they tend to stay away from padded or mushy models. But that doesn't mean they aren't thinking about how to reduce unwanted vibrations. Robert Allenby is using Lamkin's Crossline Sting Free model. Lamkin has been working on vibration reduction for some time -- the company just celebrated its 85th anniversary.

• The latest in hand protection from Lamkin is a proprietary rubber blend called 3GEN. It's a tacky mix that also dampens vibration, but doesn't twist like a spongy material, Lamkin says. Company chemists got the idea from grips on tools and other devices where users needed a buffer against excess vibration.