SOUTHAMPTON, N.Y. – Inbee Park is the best putter in women’s golf.
There are folks who would contend she might be the best putter in all of golf, man or woman.
That’s what makes Sunday evening’s revelation about how she found her current putter so astounding.
Park was becoming frustrated enough with her putting stroke early last year, she briefly went to a belly putter, her caddie, Brad Beecher, confided in the aftermath of Park’s U.S. Women’s Open triumph on Sunday.
Over a 10-month spell from late summer of 2011 to early summer of 2012, Park went 16 consecutive events without recording a top-10 finish in an LPGA event.
In the midst of that cool spell, she experimented with a belly putter. Beecher said she actually put it in play for one round at the Kia Classic in March 2012. It’s how she found the head of her current putter, an Odyssey Sabertooth.
“Funny enough, it’s probably what she needed to get her going,” Beecher said.
After one round with the belly putter, Beecher said, Park abandoned it, convincing herself she was too good to resort to a belly putter. While she didn’t like the belly putter, she did like its Odyssey Sabertooth head. She had the head put on a standard putter shaft.
Park has been putting with that Odyssey Sabertooth ever since. She leads the LPGA in putts per greens in regulation (1.702) this season.
“She’s never really had help with her putting,” Beecher said.
Park, who putts left-hand low, said she is her own putting teacher.
“I never had a putting coach,” Park said earlier this year. “I had a swing coach, but putting has been my instinct and my feelings.”