Mark Calcavecchia hits his tee shot Friday on the second hole at Prestonwood Country Club.
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Mark Calcavecchia lets you in on a secret. A hacker.
Pro shops, it seems, offer more than hot dogs and headbands.
They house the “best” players, he says.
believe it, winner of the 1989 Open Championship said. Maybe mind you. Consider him a bit of a spokesperson in the field. This week, he said he bought a Ping PLD Anser, complete with a rubber cover, off the rack at the clubhouse in Prestonwood Country Clubwhere Calcavecchia and the PGA Tour Champions circuit are playing the SAS Championship.
“I’m desperate,” he told a Champions Tour social media producer, via a video shared by the tour. “I will try anything. It’s a nice shooter. I’m coping really well today, so I’m excited.”
At this point in the video, Calcavecchia confirmed where he got the blade.
“They are always the best players,” he said. “If they send you one, it’s probably going to be fixed and unsteady and have attics on it. I just saw this and it looked beautiful right away, so it went in my bag.”
Desperate times call for desperate measures, right? At a glance the statistics of this season’s championsThe 64-year-old has a goals-against average of 1.828 (which would rank him 63rd on the tour if he played enough) and he is taking 29.31 strokes per round (which would rank him 21st) . Notably, though, Calcavecchia has gone to the pro shop before — he said in the video that three of his 13 PGA Tour wins were earned that way.
So we started digging a little. We searched on Google “Mark Calcavecchia and putter pro shop” and found:
— In 2007, at the so-called PODS Championship (now the Valspar Championship), Calcavecchia won with a putter buy — a week after he snapped a putter on the knee and missed a cut, according to one Associated Press HistoRy.
“I just look at it (the rubber device) and see which one looks the least ugly,” he told The Associated Press. “Or which I wouldn’t mind breaking some time during the round.”
— In the 2015 Principal Charity Classic on the Tournament of Champions, Calcavecchia won after going to a Dick’s Sporting Goods in Des Moines, according to one Associated Press HistoRy written by Jimmy Golen. The story went that he went to the sporting goods store only because his wife needed running clothes – then he rolled 12 balls on the green.
“That’s how stupid it is; it’s just psychological,” he told her Associated Press. “Basically it’s just the look for me and what it looks like. … There are times when I just don’t like any of my players, I’ll just look for something else.”
– In 2010, Yahoo Sports’ Jay Busbee reported on Calcavecchia’s dissatisfaction with putters, citing a GOLF magazine history.
“Well, there’s one sitting in a rain gutter at a Residence Inn in Akron, Ohio,” Calcavecchia said in Busbee’s story. “I was staying on the second floor and I just reached out the window and put him in there. It’s not very nice there in winter. There is one in a flower garden in Westchester (NY). There are some in the ocean. I’ve given more kids than I’ve broken, but sometimes it’s good to break one.”
– In 2022, Bob McClellan of the Tournament of Champions sat down for a Q&A with Calcavecchia, who revealed he won his first PGA Tour event, the 1986 Southwest Golf Classic, after a trip to the locker room.
“We play a practice round in Abilene, Texas, it’s blowing out like 30, and I had four three-putts on the front nine,” Calcavecchia said in the story. “I had only brought one putter, my normal old Anser, and I said, ‘I’m going to the pro shop to buy the ugliest machine I can find.’ I went through the locker room to go to the bathroom and the starters guy had about 20 players out in the locker room. Then I saw it, the old black head putter called the Dead Center Titleist putter. I said, ‘This is the ugliest thing I can find. Can I try this for the back nine?’ And I went out and did everything, shot like 31 and took everybody’s money and then ended up winning the tournament with them. I still have that shooter to this day.
“The winner’s check was $72,000. At that point they gave us the big cardboard checks. I’m flying to West Palm from Dallas via Atlanta and I’m lugging around this giant check. Everyone looked at me like I was a complete idiot. But I didn’t care. I was pretty happy. Of course I still have the check in a storage shed somewhere.”
