Tiger Woods trialling different putters at Firestone

All eyes will be on Tiger Woods as he tees it up for the first time in three months at the WGC Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone and while it will be interesting to see what his full swing is like, many experts will have their sights set on how he performs on the greens.

At his last few events he was rolling a Nike Method 003 putter, quite a step away from the blade-style Scotty Cameron he used to win 13 of his 14 Majors.

But this week at Firestone he has been practising with both the Nike Method 001 putter and his Scotty Cameron – both traditional anser-style blades.

TG recently caught up with Nike putter guru David Franklin to speak about how Tiger ended up choosing the Method 003 model he used at the Masters.

He said: “Tiger came to the Oven last Fall where we have all the putter styles on a rack on the putting lab. We were doing high speed camera testing with Tiger and he turned around and looked at the models on the wall and he grabbed an 003 off the rack.

“Beforehand I’d hand made a few 001’s for him. They were totally custom hand made for him, very beautuiful putters and I couldn’t believe it when he turned around a grabbed a demo that’s all beat up.

“It’d been on the rack for six months and it was the one that we use to fit people with. He hits a couple of putts with it and he goes ‘man, I love the way the toe swings on this putter’.

“He really wants to release the toe so he said it felt like one he used when he was an amateur the way the toe closed through the stroke. So he hit a few with the 003 and started to focus on that and I’m thinking Tiger lets get back to these 001s here that we want to fit you with but he just kept playing around with the 003.

“He ended up leaving that day with it and asked me to make me a couple more that were a little newer and a little fresher. He actually left with the demo one.

“You’ll notice the one that he used has nothing on the sole. It’s a stock 003 but we just take the artwork off the sole. He wants a smooth sole on his putter just because he doesn’t want to feel it dragging the grass or anything.

“He did very well with it. At the Masters you could see where he was connected with it and at times he was disconnected with it. The goal is to be completely connected with the putter.”

Nike will be hoping he feels connected with the Method 001 on the greens this week if he ends up putting it in play. If his leg has healed as well as he says it has and he regains his legendary touch on the greens he will once again be a force to be reckoned with.