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Hello, old friend: Tiger Woods switches back to Scotty Cameron putter, drains three early birdies at BMW Championship

September 6, 2018

Tiger Woods got off to a hot start at the BMW Championship, and there is one obvious contributing factor: his old Scotty Cameron putter.

Tiger was spotted testing out the Newport 2 Tuesday during a practice round with Rory McIlroy at Aronimink. Woods had multiple putters in his bag that day, and he appeared to test them all out on the greens prior to the start of this third leg of the FedEx Cup Playoffs.

On Thursday it was clear that Woods decided to switch back to the putter that has won him 13 major championships. He quickly proved that it was the right decision, rolling in a 20-footer for birdie on his first hole of the day.

He followed that up by draining a 13-footer at 12 (his third hole of the day) for another birdie. But he wasn’t done yet. On the very next hole, Woods stroked in his third birdie of the day with his Scotty Cameron, moving him to three under through four holes.

While there have been a lot of changes to Tiger’s gear post-Nike, most of the movement in his bag of late has involved putters. Woods began his most recent comeback with his faithful Scotty Cameron Newport 2 in his bag. That was a change from recent years when he used a similarly-designed Nike blade putter.

But when he struggled on the greens early in the season, Woods made his first dramatic change. He left his Scotty in the garage and instead employed a TaylorMade TP Black Copper Ardmore 3 mallet starting at the Quicken Loans National in June.

Then last week at the Dell Technologies Championship, Tiger made another change. He dropped the TaylorMade mallet and replaced it with a TP Collection Black Copper Juno with “Tiger” stamped in red on the back.

But despite a solid performance on the greens at TPC Boston, the TaylorMade blade had a short-lived residency in Tiger’s bag. Just days later he switched back to the Scotty flatstick.

If his first few putts are any guide, Woods made the correct call.