Welcome to Wall-to-Wall Equipment, the weekly gear wrap-up in which GOLF equipment editor Jonathan Wall takes you through the latest trends, rumors and breaking news.
It’s all about the visuals
Xander Schauffele’s 6-footer will be played on PGA Championship highlight reels for years to come — the ball catching the left edge and spinning into the hole for a tournament-defining birdie. But let’s go back a few moments, before the putt was struck, when CBS cameras zoomed in on the Odyssey Toulon Las Vegas Prototype putter and Callaway Chrome Tour golf ball that would soon remove the 30-year-old from the “best player to never win a major” conversation.
Schauffele’s mallet is impossible to miss on the course due to the red paint on the head. It’s a color he’s come to embrace over the years, outside of a brief stint with the same putter in a silver finish. Visuals matter at the top level of professional golf, and Schauffele’s rarely seen a need to shake things up.
Go back a few years and you’ll find an Odyssey O-Works Red #7 CH in Schauffele’s bag. The head color matches up with the Odyssey Toulon Las Vegas Prototype he started using last year at the Arnold Palmer Invitational. So, too, does the black insert on the face. Or at least it looks like a black insert at first glance.
The insert found on the O-Works Red #7 CH was simply a White Hot painted black to tone down the contrast between the two colors. However, when Schauffele chose to go away from White Hot last to try a different feel with the diamond-milled groove pattern found on his current wand, Odyssey designers had to figure out a way to keep the visuals consistent sans insert.
Schauffele wanted to see a dark finish on the face that mimicked the black White Hot insert on his old wand, so Odyssey added black paint to a large section of the face. The only part that didn’t receive black paint was a small section at the top where it transitions from the crown to the face.
“Transitioning from the topline and figuring out where we wanted the red paint to stop was tricky,” Toulon said. “If you stop it at the edge of the topline, it can get chipped or look that way easier. So we took it over slightly to make sure it didn’t look choppy.”
Even though Odyssey painted the face to the bottom — inserts typically float in the middle of the face — Schauffele found the custom job passed the eye test at address.
“When he got the putter, he looked down at it and said, ‘Hello, old friend,’” Toulon said. “It’s what he’s seen a lot of putts go in with over the years. It’s a comfort thing for him.”
Schauffele and the putter have been inseparable ever since.
New neck
Brooks Koepka’s Scotty Cameron T5.5 putter remained in the bag during the major championship, but it was deemed a “new” putter for one specific reason: the neck.
Instead of sticking with the slant neck that earned plenty of coverage during the Masters, Koepka moved into the same T5.5 with a plumber’s neck. According to a Titleist rep, Koepka liked the look and feel of the 5.5 but wanted to see it rotate more like the Anser-style blade he’s used for most of his career.
Quick-hitters: Viktor Hovland switched from Titleist’s Pro V1 to Pro V1x golf ball to add spin through the bag. … Michael Block became the first pro to put a full set of TaylorMade’s Proto irons (5-9) in play.
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