Golfers are a superstitious bunch. Jack Nicklaus famously had to play with three coins in his pocket. Tiger Woods always wears red on Sunday. Tom Weiskopf used broken tees on par-3s. Payne Stewart always went to a new ball after making a bogey — anything to turn the mojo around or keep on the right side of the golf gods.
For William Mouw, that act involved a pot of boiling water and an uncooperative putter.
Last year, William Mouw rode a red-hot putter to a final-round 9-under 61 to win the ISCO Championship by one shot over Paul Peterson. One year later, Mouw returned to Kentucky for his title defense, and the flatstick was less than cooperative. In the first round at Hurstbourne Country Club in Louisville, Kentucky, Mouw lost 2.193 shots on the green. That ranked 132nd in the field.
Mouw finished the first round five shots back of Lucas Glover and chose to do something bizarre to heat up an ice-cold putter.
Leaving the course on Thursday, Mouw joked with his caddie that he planned to put his putter in boiling water overnight to get it hot for a run up the leaderboard. Mouw followed through on his “joke.” When he pulled his putter out of the boiling water on Friday, the golf gods responded.
Mouw went out Friday and carded a bogey-free 7-under 63 that saw him gain over two shots on the greens while making birdie putts of 26, 23 and 20 feet to close to within four of Glover, who holds the 36-hole lead at 13 under
“Jokingly, I put my putter in hot water last night, and it stayed hot,” Mouw said after his round on Friday. “I woke up with it hot out of the water and stayed hot all round.
“Something to change up the mojo,” Mouw said later. “The putter was cold. So it was so cold, and I just thought, jokingly, let’s put this in some extremely hot water. I woke up with hot water on it and it stayed hot all day. Jokingly, it worked.”
Mouw made just 50 feet of putts on Thursday. After boiling his putter, that number jumped to 105 on Friday. Glover had a front-row seat to Mouw going from Iceman to the Human Torch on the greens, but he wasn’t aware of how Mouw got cooking on the putting surfaces.
“Huh, I thought it was a different putter. The other one looked black, this one silver,” Glover said. “I thought it was a different putter altogether. I didn’t ask because he made everything, so I didn’t want to mess up the mojo.
“I’ve thrown a few and kicked a few and broke a few but never boiled one,” Glover said. “I get it. He did, it worked. So he might be melted by tomorrow.”
Sure enough, with his mojo headed in the right direction, Mouw doesn’t plan on letting his putter cool off heading into the weekend. His chances of catching Glover and defending his title rest on it staying blistering hot.
“It just stayed hot all day and I’m going to do it tonight too,” Mouw said.
A word of advice to the weekend grinders out there: You can wear red on Sundays, but leave the putter-boiling to the professionals.
