Did The Saw Unlock Morikawa’s Putting Genius?
I wish I could remember which TV golf commentator said that they didn’t think Collin Morikawa would win a big tournament last fall, or even what the tournament was, possibly the Masters. But the upshot was that he didn’t think Morikawa was that good a putter and that he would need to be much better to contend in big tournaments going forward.
Looks like that announcer wasn’t the only one who thought Morikawa needed a putting assist. Morikawa thought so, too, and he went to an expert for some advice on “The Saw” grip. After winning the WGC Workday Championship, he explained how it all happened.
“I’m always concerned about my putting,” he admitted to media after his victory. “But that’s because I’ve never felt comfortable.”
How a guy with any kind of putting problems had not heard about “The Saw” or “The Claw” or other variations of that grip until two or three weeks ago is a mystery, but according to Morikawa he hadn’t. He also didn’t know that Mark O’Meara, who he knew only slightly, used it.
Regardless of lack of knowledge, Morikawa decided to try The Saw it for 18 holes at TPC Summerlin. He was, by his own admission, awful.
“I made nothing. Like I made zero putts,” he explained about the experiment.
But The Saw kept him up that night. Only a golfer, right? He said he’d never thought about putting that much before, but the saw felt good. It felt right.
“It just felt so different on how I was putting that I knew I was heading down the right path,” he added.
More from Golf History
- Stars You Know at World Champions Cup Starts Thursday at Concession
- “Love Weather” Dominates at RSM Classic: Rain and Wind and Golf
- Davis Love III, Zach Johnson Reflect on What They Learned as Ryder Cup Captains
- Reflections on a Pilgrimage to the Home of Golf
- David Duval Says Memories Abound at Constellation Furyk & Friends
Morikawa sought out O’Meara, who now lives near Las Vegas, and asked him for 10 minutes to discuss the somewhat unconventional putting grip. They met up at TPC Summerlin. The 10 minutes turned into an hour, and there was no instruction in the conversation, just an explanation of what O’Meara does and why he made the change.
For those who don’t know, shortly after O’Meara made the switch, he beat his friend Tiger Woods as well as Ernie Els, Darren Clarke and Colin Montgomerie in the Dubai tournament. That was a convincer for him.
Mark O’Meara was the 1998 Masters and British Open champ with a normal putting grip. He was always known as a great putter. He won the AT&T Pebble Beach five times, and you have to have some talent to putt those greens. When he won the Masters, O’Meara was still going conventional. It wasn’t until he got to be 47 years old that he had run out of options. That’s when Hank Haney showed him The Claw, which he modified into The Saw. It was 2004. Seventeen years later, the grip lives on.
The Saw grip is a modification of The Claw grip that was promoted by Wisconsin native Skip Kendall, a PGA Tour player you probably don’t know. Years ago, he shared the technique with Mark Calcavecchia and Chris DiMarco. But Kendall himself didn’t use it, at least not then.
The Claw, it seems, got passed along like a good story or great gossip. In the beginning it was John Pfannerstill, a Wisconsin Judge, who is credited with inventing it in the 1970s because his putting was so bad. The Claw was shared with his golfing buddies in the Badger state, and eventually someone playing in a pro-am with Kendall was using it. Kendall remembered it when talking putting with Calcavecchia and DiMarco. They decided to give it a whirl. That’s when The Claw broke loose and became sort of, laughingly, mainstream.
However, it worked. Calcavecchia used it to win the Waste Management Phoenix Open when he was 47 years old, and in the process, he broke a 46-year-old PGA Tour scoring record by posting 28-under par. That’s when the laughter died down.
With Calc’s victory in 2001, The Claw got legs. Variations, like The Saw, sprung up over time. Pretty soon all kinds of people were trying The Claw and The Saw. And now, thanks to Collin Morikawa, it’s making a second debut.
Typically, strange putting grips pop up because players develop what’s called The Yips, a word many golfers don’t even like to say. The Yips are actually caused by overuse of the small muscles golfers use for putting. Not everyone gets them. People used to think it was mental, but when the Mayo clinic looked at the problem, they decided it was not mental but actually a physical and neurological issue. It’s called a dystonia or a focal dystonia.
There are similar situations with musicians that lose their ability to play certain instruments. Vocalists lose their ability to sing the way they did in their primes.
Whether Morikawa was subject to The Yips, only he and his coach know for sure. But bringing The Saw back to the spotlight made it worth remembering where it came from and why. Will it be the weapon that saves Morikawa’s career? We won’t know that unless he changes his putting grip again. For him, it was the secret to unlock his inner putting genius.
Morikawa thinks it has definitely helped him.
“Some weeks were really good and then some weeks were just awful,” he said about his pre-Saw putting. “Now I feel confident I can take the stroke out of play, and I can just really focus on speed, I can focus on the line, how do I get that ball to fall in the hole where I want it.”
He knows he’s going to have some bad putting days and even weeks, but with The Saw, he says he’s much more confident.
Let’s see, in less than two years as a pro, he won a PGA, The Barracuda and the Workday played at Jack Nicklaus’ Muirfield Village when he wasn’t confident. Now after a couple of weeks with The Saw, he’s won the WGC Workday and has confidence. If I were the rest of the PGA Tour players, I might be a little concerned! Or I might call Mark O’Meara for a putting lesson.