Omeara on new putter and Tiger Woods

The PGA TOUR Superstore in Delray Beach, Florida, was crowded on Friday, Feb. 8, after the first round of the PGA TOUR Champions Oasis Championship just up the road in Boca Raton.

Mark O’Meara spotted fellow players Tommy Armour III and Colin Montgomerie, his partner at this week’s Bass Pro Shops Legends of Golf in Ridgedale, Missouri. He wasn’t sure what they were doing there, but he was looking for a putter.

After putting poorly in the first round and at the season-opening Mitsubishi Electric Championship at Hualalai, O’Meara had made up his mind that he was done with the Odyssey Fang. The player didn’t tell his caddie until the round was over.

“About the seventh hole at Boca on Friday I was like, ‘Why am I putting with this putter? I hate this putter. Why am I using it?’” O’Meara said on Wednesday. “I decided I wasn’t using it anymore.”

O’Meara, 62, told Mitch Wizner, his caddie, after his first round even-par 72 that they were going to go to the pro shop at Broken Sound to buy a putter. But alas, the course had put out only clothing for tournament-goers and had put away all of the clubs. Rather than rummage through a very crowded, small room filled with clubs, Wizner suggested the PGA TOUR Superstore, which was about a 7-mile drive from the course.

“We walked in there with a couple of Titleist golf balls,” O’Meara said. “I hadn’t been in there in forever. There were like 10,000 putters. It was like a kid going to Disneyland. I started grabbing them all, and they were priced anywhere from $100 to $650.

“I was always a Ping Anser 2 guy. I found an Odyssey White Hot putter. What was good about it was you had to have your hands forward not to see the white face. I was hitting putts with it and I liked it. … It has more toe swing as opposed to face balance. And another good thing was it was only $108.”

Proud of his frugality, O’Meara put it in his bag for the second round at the Oasis and has putted with it since. The results? He won the Cologuard Classic three weeks later at Omni Tucson (Arizona) National, his first victory in eight-plus years on PGA TOUR Champions. He ranks first on tour in putting average and sits 10th in the Charles Schwab Cup standings.

Every last player on PGA TOUR Champions will tell anyone who will listen that the putter is the key to winning. Everybody out here still can get it from tee to green well. But getting the ball in the hole often is another story.

O’Meara always has been pretty good with the putter. When he last was this high in the Schwab Cup standings, in 2015 when he finished 15th, he ranked third in putting average.

The $108 putter wasn’t the only switch for O’Meara around the greens. When he got to Tucson, he began a whole new routine. He doesn’t consider himself superstitious, and he says all of the changes were happenstance.

“I always marked my ball with a quarter or a penny,” O’Meara said. “But for some reason I went with a dime. After I marked my ball, I gave it to Mitch and I stood off to the side, not looking at my putt. I just didn’t really even get focused till I needed to putt. And I play pretty quickly anyway. When it was my turn I looked at my line real quick and putted.

“A lot of times you’re looking at your line, practicing your stroke, and thinking about the putt. I just kind of stood over to side and waited. And that seemed to work obviously very well.”

O’Meara and his Odyssey White Hot caught fire in the first round at the Cologuard, and he started dropping dimes everywhere. He recalled hitting driver into the first fairway, hitting a nice 9-iron about 15 feet past on No. 1 and burning the edge with his first putt. He then rolled in eight consecutive birdies to turn in 8 under and he barely missed making it nine in a row on No. 10. Fourty-four holes later he had a four-stroke victory over four players and had become the fourth-oldest player to win on PGA TOUR Champions.

O’Meara even got a congratulatory text from longtime friend Tigers Woods, with whom he used to be neighbors in Orlando, Florida.

Coincidentally, Woods is in the process of building his first public-access courses, including a par-3 nine, at Big Cedar Lodge. He’s only seven years from being eligible for PGA TOUR Champions. Anyone for an O’Meara-Woods team?

“I would except he doesn’t return his congratulatory texts,” O’Meara joked. “And I sat next to him on Tuesday at Augusta (at the past champions dinner; O’Meara won The Masters in 1998), and I saw him on Friday and Saturday. I may not want him as my partner. He better play a little better. Maybe needs to win a few more majors.

“That’s T-Dubs. Maybe he’ll read this and text me. Or maybe he changed his number when he saw mine pop up on his phone. He did text me after my victory. I saw him in the locker room on the Sunday prior to the start of the week. He gave me a big hug and I remember telling him, I said, ‘I won in my 20s, I won in my 30s, I won in my 40s, I won in my 50s, and I won in my 60s.’ As he was walking away he goes, ‘That’s about right, M.O. You won in about 1929.’”