It started with a question: What’s the best steel? In the midst of crafting that putter, Tiger Woods wanted to know if master craftsman Scotty Cameron had a preference when it came to the material he’d use to bring the Newport 2 GSS to life.
Cameron didn’t waiver: “I told him it was German Stainless Steel,” he said on a recent episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped podcast. The 303 stainless steel sourced from Germany provided a distinct sound and feel at impact for not only Woods but countless pros (and amateurs) who’ve been lucky enough to get a “GSS” putter in their hands.
Once the decision was made to craft Woods’ future wand from GSS, Cameron got to work shaping his latest creation. The only question that remained as the putter started to take shape centered around the preferred alignment aid.
According to Cameron, Woods had tried different alignment options — line and no line being the most common — over the years to help him zero in on the target.
Woods wanted a “focus point” on the putter, but he couldn’t stand the idea of using a line.
“Some days when I wake up, my eyes see the sightline left or right,” Cameron recalled Woods telling him at the time. “So sometimes the line messes me up. But I need a focus point.”
It was Cameron who suggested Woods consider the idea of adding a single sight dot to the topline of the putter instead. If Woods was willing to trust Cameron’s opinion on the head material, there was no way he was going to push back on the sight dot. The idea received an immediate thumbs-up from Woods.
Now here’s where the story takes an interesting turn. In a world where machines are constantly taking on a bulk of the load during the club design process, it’s important to point out Woods’ sight dot was actually added by hand. More specifically, Cameron’s hands.
With only one chance to nail the position of the sight dot, Cameron opted to trust his instincts and eyes and hammer it himself. A do-over wasn’t even an option.
“[Tiger] was there for a short time, and I could’ve set up the mill,” Cameron said. “But instead, I put [the putter] in a vice and took out a punch and hammered that sight dot after I teeter-tottered the head to find out exactly where the sweet spot was.”
Once Cameron found the best location for the dot, he pulled back the punch and “boom”: Tiger’s sight dot was a reality.
“Hand punch, hand drilled,” Cameron revealed. “So the dot on that putter was done by hand and by eye.”
Think about the confidence required to pull off something so audacious with Woods in the building. If you don’t get it just right, he’s going to know. Not to mention a misstep could’ve required building another putter from scratch.
In the end, Cameron nailed the challenge and a mythical putter was born.
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