Professional caddies will go to great lengths to ensure their player has the best possible chance of winning. Apparently, that includes picking up putters off eBay.
In one of the more amusing equipment stories of the year, Tommy Fleetwood’s caddie, Ian Finnis, decided to get his boss something special for his birthday in January — an older-model Odyssey DFX 2-Ball Blade he reportedly picked up for £90 (or roughly $109 at the current exchange rate).
The putter has special significance to Fleetwood, who used the exact same model growing up. Finnis re-shafted and re-gripped the club before giving it to Fleetwood. Little did Finnis realize the putter would get a run in competition early in the season when Fleetwood replaced his Odyssey White Hot Pro #3 with 2-Ball Blade at Pebble Beach.
The putter enjoyed a brief run in Fleetwood’s bag before he returned to the White Hot Pro #3. But with the putter running hot and cold toward the end of the season, Fleetwood again went back to the 2-Ball Blade this week in Switzerland at the Omega European Masters, where he opened with 65. The round included an astounding 21 putts, which isn’t too shabby.
If buying, re-shafting and re-gripping the putter wasn’t a kind enough gesture by Finnis, he also added the black line that runs through the middle of the two white circles on the crown himself. I’m not sure that sort of service is in the caddie job description. Then again, that’s what makes Finnis one of the best loopers in the business.
