The Loop

Rickie Fowler used a little Tiger Woods magic to win the Players last week. With some help from Scotty Cameron

Scotty Cameron, the most successful man in putters, revealed some interesting information about Rickie Fowler's putter on his website this week. Among other things, Rickie's using a putter originally reserved for Tiger Woods.

It's clear that Rickie and Scotty and his crew are pretty tight: "We're talking an 11-year-plus Scotty Cameron and Putter Studio relationship that borders on familial," the post says. So it makes sense that when Rickie wanted to change things up with his putting last year, he went straight to the source. They did a lot of testing with Rickie, and ended up realigning his setup: "His lower body and upper body were going in opposite directions," Cameron wrote. With the new setup, they needed a new putter to match it. This is where it gets cool. Rickie, Scotty and one of the fitters, Paul, came across a "dusty-topped box" that contained putterheads originally made for Tiger, called the Newport 2 GSS. (GSS stands for German Stainless Steel, an Acushnet trademarked term for a type of 303 stainless steel.) [#image: /photos/55ad7d0aadd713143b42cd58]|||rickie's putter image.jpg|||*(Photo: scottycameron.com) *

The head is similar to the Newport 2, except the lines are a bit sharper and the face more shallow. They took it, attached a shaft so it stands at 35 inches (70 degree lie and 3 degrees of loft), stamped "Rickie Fowler" on it, and gave it a silver finish. The putter was in his bag all last season for his top five finishes in each of the 2014 Majors, and he used it when he was dropping all those birdie putts down the stretch to win the Players this year.[

](http://www.golfdigest.com/blogs/the-loop/2015/05/rickie-fowler-wins-the-players-championship.html)Related: Rickie Fowler electrifies the fans -- and silences the critics -- with his win at the Players While the story on Scotty Cameron's website is cool on its own, it made me wonder how the whole thing went down. Why hadn't anyone touched the box of putterheads over the last four years? (Tiger hasn't played a Scotty Cameron Putter since 2011.) Did Rickie stumble upon them himself, or did Scotty pull it for him? My questions, unfortunately, weren't answered. Titleist isn't speaking about it any further because Rickie doesn't have a contract to play Scotty Cameron putters. I get it: He's not one of their players, so they're not going to talk about him.

Obviously, I'm now picturing the secret box of putters made for Tiger back in his heyday were stored in a golden vault, saved for a day when Woods may need them. Since there were several magic putterheads in the box, I wonder who will get the next one.

Maybe when Rickie and his girlfriend Alexis Randock get back from the Bahamas, he'll tell more of the story.