Equipment Insider: Garrigus finds success with short putter

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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.

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Robert Garrigus was pleased about the many benefits of his win at Disney -- a nice check, a PGA TOUR card for 2011 -- but one of the leading highlights was this victory's effectiveness as a memory-eraser.

"It feels great to be able to close this one off and figuratively shut everybody up about Memphis," Garrigus told reporters after his bogey free, final-round 64. "Every time I got an interview it was about Memphis, but it really helped me just to realize that it's not that big a deal."

At this year's St. Jude Classic in Memphis, Garrigus didn't leak oil, he erupted it, blowing a three-stroke lead on the final hole and walking away with only the bitter loss. So now, the shut-up factor is huge. But one of the tools that helped him achieve it is not.

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Fans surely noticed that when Garrigus gets over putts, he gets way over them, his back making nearly a right angle with his legs. That's because Robert's putter, a Titleist by Scotty Cameron Newport Square, is cut down to 28 inches overall length. Most putters fall somewhere between 33 and 35 inches, so Garrigus' wand -- which attracts ribbing from colleagues who speculate that Garrigus stole it from a kid -- is definitely a different approach.

Of course, special-length putters are familiar at all levels, from Nationwide through Champions. But they're usually longer and belly models. Anyone who has tried them can testify that getting the benefits of a longer club requires getting used to the feeling of the head at the end of the outsize shaft. What you feel in your hands is not necessarily different. A little practice ordinarily sets things right, and swing inconsistencies begin to disappear.

Advocates of shorter putters are usually trying to solve a different problem. They may have difficulty getting their eyes over or just inside the intended line of the putt, resulting in pushes and pulls and other directional nightmares. Shortening the putter requires a more aggressive bend at the waist, as Garrigus does, putting one's eyes in the right place.

There are some potential problems to guard against, not the least of which is the impact on the player's lower back. And just as a clubhead feels different at the end of a long putter, so it will at the end of a short one as well. So either the weight has to be adjusted, or the player has to get used to a standard weight putter head at the end of a shorter stick. Both these issues can be gotten around, though, and making more putts is generally seen as well worth the effort.

From the short to the long: anyone who has seen Robert Garrigus play knows that he pounds the ball off the tee. His average for the week of nearly 317 yards led the field. His war club was a TaylorMade R9 SuperTri with just 8.5 degrees of loft. Its face, deeper than most modern drivers, offers a lot of hitting area, which has to improve confidence for a player who comes at the ball so hard.

Then there's the adjustability story. While many TOUR players are in the set-it-and-forget-it camp, the SuperTri offers recreational players a chance to correct for course conditions and/or swing variations. Moveable weight technology allows custom placement of the center of gravity, which can adjust trajectory up or down. The face angle is also adjustable, thanks to a fitting on the end of the shaft that seats into the head in a number of different positions. Once screwed in, the face can be up to two degrees open or two degrees closed, which can help correct a swing tendency that sends the ball too far left or too far right, respectively.