See clubs Cameron Young used to shoot 59, including brand-new putter
You can call that a good debut. Cameron Young’s 59 in the third round of the Travelers Championship came on his first week with a new putter in the bag.
Young gained more than two strokes on the greens Saturday, making a 33-footer for birdie on his ninth hole and a crucial 10-footer on the final green that allowed him to become the 12th man to shoot sub-60 in PGA TOUR competition.
Young is using a Scotty Cameron Phantom 5.5 prototype putter. He has been using that model since the Florida Swing, but this week he switched from a putter with a traditional silver finish to a darker, black look.
“He usually likes to have a little darker one and then a little lighter one, like a silver,” said Scotty Cameron’s Brad Cloke. “We first worked on this particular model right around the (Cognizant Classic in The Palm Beaches in March). The black one that he put in play this week, I built for him at the PGA Championship.”
The only differences between Young’s putterhead and the stock version available at retail is the black finish and lack of an aimline on the head.
The specs of his black and silver versions of the putter are the same. The darker one just gives a different look on the greens. For a player like Young who does not use an aim line atop the putter, each aspect of the putter’s appearance can play a big role in alignment.
“A lot of it is just how the putter frames the ball,” Cloke said. “The darker finish just tends to bring certain lines out as far as framing and also hide certain lines for him. Both of his versions of this head have no sight lines on it, so he actually uses our subtle features in our design on that head for alignment.”
The head of the 5.5 is slightly smaller than previous versions of the club and the shoulders of the clubhead are angled toward the center of the face, which also helps with alignment. This helps players like Young avoid getting “line-locked,” Cloke said, and focusing too much on the alignment of the putterhead at the expense of speed and other factors.
Young switched into the Phantom 5.5 during the Florida Swing because the putter had more “toe flow” than his previous face-balanced mallet. That means the putterhead opens and closes more during the stroke instead of staying square. It is preferred by players who prefer for the putterhead to rotate a bit more in the stroke instead of staying square. The Phantom 5.5 also has a short neck instead of a “knuckle neck” with some offset, similar to what is seen with many blade-style putters, like he had been using.
Young also has new woods in the bag. The Travelers is his third event with Titleist’s new GT line of woods. He put them in the bag when they were introduced on TOUR at the Memorial Tournament presented by Workday, adding a GT3 driver and GT2 3-wood to his bag.
See Young’s full bag breakdown and the clubs he used in his historic round below.
Driver: Titleist GT3 9 degrees
Shaft: Mitsubishi Tensei 1K White 70 TX
3-wood: Titleist GT2 Fairway 13.5 degrees
Shaft: Mitsubishi Tensei 1K White 80 TX
Irons: Titleist T200 (3,4), Titleist T100 (5), Titleist 631.CY Prototype (6-9)
Shafts: MMT Utility 105 TX (3), True Temper Dynamic Gold X7 (4-9)
Wedges: Vokey Design SM10 48.10F, 52.12F, WedgeWorks 58.06K, WedgeWorks 60.06K (@62) wedges
Shafts: True Temper Dynamic Gold X7
Putter: Scotty Cameron Phantom 5.5 Tour Prototype
Grips: Golf Pride Tour Velvet Align
Ball: Titleist Pro V1 Left Dot
SOURCE: [pgatour.com]
