NEW Scotty Cameron Prototype Putters & Rickie Fowler’s Persimmon Driver | Inside The Ropes: 3M Open

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Welcome to the 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities. course designed by Arnold Palmer, located in Blaine, Minnesota. Despite some unfortunate wet weather brought to you by Mother Nature, we’re still here to bring you some equipment gems from Onsite in this week’s episode of Inside the Ropes, brought to you by golfwx.com. First up, let’s get right to the news. In a surprise unveiling, Scotty Cameron brought out a slew of experimental prototypes for players to test. including a number three model. a 3.2 model. and a 3.5 model. This wasn’t an official launch, but more of a tour seating operation. Scotty Cameron tour rep Drew Paige worked with players who wanted to give them a try and he told us these putters have been one of the most immediately well-received unveilings that he’s experienced on tour. Also on site this week was modern putter legend Paul Vzano who works closely with players in R&D as the director of player fitting and development at Scotty Cameron. We caught up with Paul to hear more about the experimental mallet prototypes and we also got his take on the current putter market from his perspective. It’s a Phantom 3 experimental stages. So, it’s still in the very infant stages of design. So, it’s critical this week getting feedback from players. Uh kind of in an old look here with the Scotty Cameron Red X Futura, right? with the heel to toe look, deeper face, souls really well as you can see. Very nostalgic shape. Very much so. So, originally the Red X, we had two versions. We didn’t come out with the second one. And we did have what we called the It went all the way back, right? We brought two versions out, showed showed them to players in at the putter studio. Most of them wanted a top line, a distinct top line. Kind of merged the two and brought it out this week. So, we’ve been sitting on this design for number of years. We’ve always talked about going back to that look. We took the combin. We had a lot of really good feedback with the SCS chain link and so we wanted to bring that back out in a full face as opposed to the smaller mount smaller uh the original SCS chain link. You take a look at full face. Gorgeous. Yes. So this is like half chain link technology mixed with nostalgic red Xact shaping. Yeah. I mean a lot of guys don’t realize that’s an insert. So I like inserts in the sense that it’s it’s metal. It’s carbon steel. But I’m going to in the future I can I can either take a GSS insert like which was on the original Red X or a stainless steel uh aluminum different kind. But all all that starts all these ideas start out here, right? This is going to do really well in Japan. I know that I know that we do a lot of these type of shapes customized out there. So, I’m looking forward to heading over there in October to bring this out. We’re going to have different neck styles. You can see this is a single band. We have the 3.5 version which is the jet neck. Looks like some weights taken out of there. Yes. Again, you got that got the 2 I think someone took it. Maybe someone already ran off with it. They did, which helps me with a transition. What have the players been saying so far? So, what’s their feedback? Came out Monday morning, showed some guys, and I there was a select group I knew that would like the shape. I didn’t have to explain too much about why we did it. Let’s say they just they’re going to look at it, knew they’d like it. And immediately that player put it in play. Practice round, practice round today, see if it see if it stays there tomorrow. Okay. And Thursday. So, yeah, pretty good feedback so far. Have you uh these putters aside, have you been busy this summer? What have your l latest builds been like? Uh been all over the place. Um technology with face inserts, technology with different milling patterns, trying to equate sound with feel. Um, that has so much to do when you’re fitting a putter. Uh, sound field helps players develop good speed control. Like a lot of players come to the studio, they want the quietest, softest putter, and sometimes they end up leaving with something with a lot more feedback than what they originally intended and they start to understand feedback from a from a putter. So, I educate a lot of players when they come in, whether it’s NextG or or guys that have been out here quite some time. There’s a lot of mixed messages with marketing from a lot of OEMs and so Putter Studio, we like to just come in and start with you in mind and just build a putter around that. What do you think of the uh putter market in general right now? It seems like there’s a big shift in the last five, seven years from blades to more experimental mallets. Well, just curious your thoughts on the putter market. So I started working for Titalist in96, Scotty in 2000. So I was very familiar with his product when I started with the company. He started in ’95. Classic designs. We had when I started working for him, we had mainly let’s say Newport Newport twos and we had a lot of circa studio designs. I slowly saw those go away from the tour and players go mainly towards you know heel and toe weighted putters Newport Newport twos. That’s when we came out with the red X. Again, I saw a lot of player like a players type mallet. They want to feel the the path. They want to feel the face and they don’t want something too too large. Few years down the road, we start to see players gravitating towards different shifts in center of gravity. Uh that’s when we came out with the Futura with the all the weight in the back. I started to recognize quite a bit of a big difference in the path that was created changing the weight around in putters. So, we started experimenting with different looks. Putter designs can go players can be after large putters chasing something that they’re let’s say more solid putter feel, putter path feel, uh higher MOI putters, they tend to lose a little bit of feel. They go back to trying to get the CG a little bit more forward. It goes up and down and the designer Scotty has to really stick with that. You know, we’ve we’ve brought Austie Rollinsson on board and he’s been a huge help in that. Absolute weapon. Scotty and I have always really looked up to what all his mallet designs. We’ve competed against him for quite some years and it’s great to have him part of the team. Seems like he’s done a lot visually like with top lines and colorways and stuff like that. Yeah, absolutely. You know, he he originally was the one that showed me these three lines and Scotty and Austy have been debating about the three solid black lines or going black, white, black. I thought some of the guys that with the that use the Prov1 to line up could benefit from a having a different like different color between the lines. That’s as opposed to But then you look at the three black lines. It’s pretty clean look also. Oh yeah. Both good-looking. Yeah. And look, I show this to a player and he he thinks that’s great looking. Then I show him this and he, you know, he goes back and forth and these guys are just like us. I mean, they the good news was they liked them all. Yeah. Yeah. Great to hear. Yeah. Great stuff, Paul. really appreciate it. Um, any closing thoughts on the you know, experimental stages. We’ll go through revisions. I’ll go back to the studio on tomorrow, sit down with Scotty and Austy, go through some feedback that I’ve got from players out here, players that I’ve known for a long time, players that I’ve just met. Um, collect our ideas, kind of throw them out there, talk to the tour reps once they get a hold of these. and uh more player interaction. Now nowadays you guys start to see this stuff pretty quick, so you’re part of the R&D process. So um you know, we take all that into consideration and try to bring the best product out to the consumer. That’s quite a meeting of the minds. Paul, Scotty, Austin. Yes. Love to be a fly on the wall for that. Yeah, I’m uh Yeah, it’s it’s very fun. All right, Paul, thanks for the time. Thank you. Distinguished golfwx.com what’s in the bag photographer Greg Moore got some inhand photos of the experimental prototype mallet made specifically for Tom Kim. Although for Kim he switched into a tailor-made spider tox putter at the open championship last week and this week he’s poised to switch into a spider to L-neck model with a single white line on the crown. Kim has kept things entertaining for us on the putter front recently, and he doesn’t seem to be letting up. Speaking of Kim, we got a great look at his bag of clubs this week, including a custom paint fill on his Titus T100 irons, a radar stamped Vokei pitching wedge, and a Shrixon driving iron. We also watched along as he dialed in his chipping motion. Moving along, we watched as Tony Feno used a striped golf ball during his putting practice session and we checked out his bag. I always check in to make sure the Nike driving iron is still in the bag and it makes me happy to report that it’s still there. We also checked out new Betardi bags on the green and dove into the bags of David’s skins. Danny Willlet, Joseph Braramlet, Nick Hardy. Hey. Hey. Hey. Kevin, you Sam Burns Sammy Valamaki. Camilo Vagus. Alex Smallley. Taylor Montgomery and how Tong Lee, who finished T4 at the Open Championship last For more gear news and scenes from Port Rush last week, don’t forget to check out our last episode from the Open Championship. And for more what’s in the bag photos from this week at the 3M Open, don’t forget to head into the golfwx.com forums to see all of Greg Moore’s extensive photo coverage. For me, the highlights from Greg’s photos this week included Ricky Fowler’s Joe Powell PC Simmon driver. No, he’s not actually playing it this week, but it is really cool. Andrew Putnham also had some heat underneath his head covers this week, including a Cleveland Launcher 3-wood. and a certified classic Adams Idea Tour prototype hybrid. Zack Blair also recently bought an old Scotty Cameron experimental detour putter off eBay, and we took an inhand look at that this week. And with that, unfortunately, we say goodbye to the 3M Open and to TPC Twin Cities. We’ll see you next time on golfwx.com’s video series, Inside the Ropes.