Former Masters champion Sandy Lyle will turn back the clock revealing he will be packing a hickory shaft putter in his bag for this week’s Masters.
Lyle is the current World Hickory champion having won the championship late last year at the famed Panmure Club just to to the south of Carnoustie.
In today’s era of high-tech golf balls, equipment and putting coaches Lyle’s decision to go with a hickory putter rekindles memories of the equipment that may have been used by those who teed up in the maiden 1934 Masters.
“I played round here on Saturday with a full set of hickory clubs and after I’d just arrived from a five hour drive,” he said.
“I wasn’t quite on full swing and my challenge was to break 80 but I didn’t. It was off the back tees mind you. I parred the first and the 18th.
Sandy Lyle with his prize for winning 2014 World Hickory Golf Championship at Panmure and now revealing he will use a hickory shaft putter in the 2015 Masters.
“But then I got out my hickory putter and what a big difference to the big Black Swan putter I’ve been using.
“I’ve been using Tad Moore’s hickory clubs for a while and I’ve been putting quite well with that putter and his wife said ‘well, why don’t you use it at Augusta?’ I said ‘I can’t do that’….it’s just something different.
“My putting hasn’t been good so maybe have a change of luck. I won’t be wearing the plus fours. I like hickory golf but I’m not that serious.”
This week is Lyle’s 34th Masters since his debut in 1980 and then winning eight years later with that infamous 7-iron from a fairway bunker up the last hole.
In all, Lyle has played 100 rounds of the Georgia golfing gem and impressed with the now 57-year old having made the cut the past two years finishing T54th (2013) and T44th last year.
This season Lyle has contested five Champions Tour events with a best finish of T 16th in the ACE Group Classic in Naples, Florida.
“The game is in reasonable shape, thank God,” he said.
“It wasn’t looking great a couple of weeks ago.”
With the golf world aghast and admiring a new ‘reach out and engage’ approach from fellow Masters champion Tiger Woods is exhibiting to fans, the media and others Lyle took the chance to ask Tiger if he’d sign a handful of Augusta flags the Scot carried into Tuesday night’s Champions Dinner.
And Woods happily agreed.
“I had about 10 flags tied together to get signed by Tiger but he was fine, he signed them all,” said Lyle.
“He also said to me ‘I hear you played on Saturday with hickory clubs’ and I said ‘how did you know?’ He asked me where I got them, so I told him the story.
“He didn’t know that name but he sounded quite interested. At the end of the evening he came over and said ‘what was that name again?’ He wants to look at my hickory clubs and maybe try something different. I am the world hickory champion and I’m sticking to it.”
