Equipment: Innovation led to celebration for Slocum

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EDITOR'S NOTE: Each week in the Equipment Insider, Adam Barr -- PGATOUR.COM's equipment columnist -- will provide breaking news, notes and analysis focused on PGA TOUR players. Adam will also appear in video segments for PGATOUR.COM.

It takes composure to hang on when your colleagues are flinging scorecards at you, many with 60-somethings on them (including a 62 from Charles Howell III on Sunday!). But Heath Slocum held up just fine, turning imagination into luck to come through for his fourth career win at The McGladrey Classic.

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Part of the reason Slocum prevailed was his willingness to innovate a little. Even though his ball was just a few inches off the green on the par-4 16th in the final round, Heath chose to keep the ball on the ground rather than put a wedge on it. A long putt, firmly struck, presented itself as the answer. It worked, downhill and all, and Slocum took a two-stroke lead into the last two holes. That enabled him to make a safe bogey on 18 and still lift a trophy.

After the round, he explained his thinking.

"Oh, yeah. I think on some of these things if you can get a putter on it, you'd rather get a putter," Slocum told the press. "I saw Troy Merritt use a putter on it and I think David Toms used the putter the few times that I've played with him. That was the first time that I'd missed the green and used the putter. Everything else I kind of either had a bump-and-run or I could hit somewhat of a flop shot to try to get it close, but yeah, I was putting it."

In My Bag: Heath Slocum

Driver: Ping G15 3-wood: Adams Speedline 9032Ti, 14.5 degrees Hybrid: Adams Idea Pro, 18 degrees Irons: Ping i15 Wedge: Ping Tour-S Putter: Ping Redwood Zing Ball: Titleist Pro V1x

Slocum found his new Ping putter worked just as well from off the green.

Pretty good for the first time he tried it. Thinking outside the box gave Slocum the chance to write a "3" in the little box on the card.

Earlier in the week, Slocum was in the Ping trailer (he's a staff member), trying to decide which of six putter options would improve on his recent lackluster performance on the greens. The one he chose, the Redwood Zing, is a compact blade made from 303 stainless steel, known for its soft feel and suitability for milling (that is, being sculpted out of a block of steel by a precision cutting machine). Slocum's Zing was 34.5 inches long.

Slocum, never known as a long hitter, averaged 276.1 yards off the tee for the week, 66th in the field. But he hit a lot of fairways -- 80.4 percent, fourth in the field. His stick of choice was a Ping G15 driver, which is designed for stability as well as distance. The titanium head, at 460cc the biggest allowed by the Rules of Golf, is longer from front to back. This helps the head resist twisting on both axis, Ping engineers say. A larger, thinner face helps preserve ball speed on less-than-perfect strikes. An external sole weight drops the center of gravity low and back in the head, adding to stability and getting the flight up a bit.

For irons, Slocum went with the Ping i15s. Compared to the driver, the i15s are not quite as far toward the game improvement end of the spectrum. But they are not, for as example, as "blade-y" as Ping's S56 irons, the player's club with which Louis Oosthuizen won the Open Championship.

Still, the i15s are intended for better players who want some trajectory control. Slocum was able to hit 82 percent of his greens with them (T7 in the field), taking advantage of the progressive nature of the i15 set: larger, more forgiving heads in the long irons; smaller, compact heads in the scoring irons to allow workability. Stability bars in the cavity, on the back of the face, work with a shock-absorbing insert to solidify the feel. And of course the cavity itself allows distribution of weight to the edges, improving the chances of a solid hit.