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The Loop

Putters take personalization to another level

June 08, 2011

Everyone seems to enjoy personalizing their equipment, even tour pros. Rickie Fowler, for instance, played college golf at Oklahoma State and is an ardent supporter of its teams. Fowler uses Oklahoma State's color, orange, as the paint fill on his irons.

Jeff Sheets and his partner Roy Tousley decided to take the popularity of personalization to another level with a new putter line design.

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The result is The Tradition Putters, their clubheads made from pewter and personalized with medallions that provide a visual representation of your choosing, including college logos. The hand-crafted medallions are mounted into the body of the putter.

Why pewter?

"Pewter allows us to more artistic with the putter," Sheets, a veteran club designer, said. "We can do so much more with intricate art work. If you look at the medallions you can see the detail, all the way down to animal fur. It allows a great deal of pesonalization."

Of course, a putter is all about performance. "As a putter it works fantastic," Sheets said. "That's because of a couple different elements, one the face technology. Two sets of parallel lines criss-cross right in the impact center. It's more off an inverted waffle effect that produces very good friction on the ball."

That and slightly less loft is said to diminish the ball's skid, allowing it to begin rolling sooner. The Tradition is a traditional mallet design, "with a high momentum of inertia," Sheets said. "That aspect in its own right produces a solid, good-feeling performance."

As for the personalizations, the medallions available cover a wide spectrum, from a military series that features the logos of the five branches (Marine Corps, Navy, Army, Air Force and Coast Guard),to a collegiate series, a wildlife series and an Americana series, among others.

-- John Strege