Major winner was ‘desperate’ to improve. So he made 1 pro shop purchase

Mark Calcavecchia lets you in on a secret. A hack. 

Pro shops, it seems, offer more than hot dogs and headcovers. 

They house the “best” putters, he says.

Believe it, the 1989 Open Championship winner said. Maybe take note. Consider him a bit of a spokesman in this area. This week, he said he bought a Ping PLD Anser, complete with a putter cover, off the rack at the clubhouse at Prestonwood Country Club, where Calcavecchia and the PGA Tour Champions circuit are playing the SAS Championship.  

“I’m desperate,” he told a Champions Tour social media producer, via a video shared by the tour. “I’ll try anything. It’s a beautiful putter. I’m putting pretty good with it today, so I’m excited.”

At this point on the video, Calcavecchia confirmed where he got the blade. 

“Those are always the best putters,” he said. “If you get one sent to you, it’d probably be hooked and not set right and have loft on it. I just looked at this one and it looked beautiful right off the hop so went right in my bag.”

Desperate times call for desperate measures, right? In a look at this season’s Champions stats, the 64-year-old has a putting average of 1.828 (which would place him 63rd on tour if he played in enough events), and he’s taking 29.31 putts per round (which would place him 21st). Notably, though, Calcavecchia has gone to the pro-shop well before — he said on the video that three of his 13 PGA Tour victories were won that way.

So we started to dig a little. On Google, we searched for “Mark Calcavecchia and putter pro shop” and found:

— In 2007, at the then-called PODS Championship (now the Valspar Championship), Calcavecchia won with a putter purchase — one week after he snapped a putter over his knee and missed a cut, according to an Associated Press story. 

“I just kind of look at it [the putter] and see which one looks less ugly to me,” he told the Associated Press. “Or which one I really wouldn’t mind breaking some time during the course of the round.”

— In 2015, at the Principal Charity Classic on the Champions tour, Calcavecchia won after he went to a Dick’s Sporting Goods in Des Moines, according to an Associated Press story written by Jimmy Golen. The story said he went to the sporting goods store only because his wife needed running clothes — then he rolled in 12 putts on the practice green.

“That’s how stupid it is; it’s just all psychological,” he told the Associated Press. “It’s basically just appearance to me and how it looks. … There are times when I just don’t like any of my putters, I’ll just look for something else.”

— In 2010, Yahoo Sports’ Jay Busbee reported on Calcavecchia’s dissatisfaction with putters, citing a GOLF Magazine story. 

“Well, there’s one sitting in a rain gutter at a Residence Inn in Akron, Ohio,” Calcavecchia said in Busbee’s story. “I was staying on the second floor and just reached out the window and put it in there. It’s not very nice there in the winter. There’s one in a flower garden in Westchester [N.Y.]. There are several in the ocean. I’ve given more away to kids than I’ve broken, but sometimes it just feels good to break one.”

— In 2022, the Champions tour’s Bob McClellan sat down for a Q&A with Calcavecchia, who revealed he won his first PGA Tour event, the 1986 Southwest Golf Classic, after a locker-room  trip. 

“We play a practice round in Abilene, Texas, it’s blowing about 30, and I had four three-putts on the front nine,” Calcavecchia said in the story. “I had only brought one putter, my normal old Anser, and I said, ‘I’m going in the pro shop to buy the ugliest putter I can find.’ I went through the locker room to go to the bathroom and the Titleist guy had put about 20 putters out in the locker room. Then I saw it, the big old black-headed putter called the Dead Center Titleist putter. I said, ‘This is the ugliest thing I can find. Can I try this for the back nine?’ And I went out and made everything, shot like 31 and took everybody’s money and then ended up winning the tournament with it. I still have that putter to this day.

“The winner’s check was $72,000. That’s when they gave us the big cardboard checks. I’m flying to West Palm from Dallas through Atlanta, and I’m dragging around this giant check. Everybody looked at me like I was a complete idiot. But I didn’t care. I was pretty happy. Pretty sure I still have the check in a storage shed somewhere.”