Paul Casey was the first player to put a Nike Method putter in play at a PGA Tour event, the 2008 WGC-Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone Country Club. A few weeks later at the Barclays Championship at Ridgewood Country Club, Casey beamed when he talked to me about his new putter.
"C'mon, I'll give you a sneaky peaky," he told me on the driving range.
Casey, the winner of last week's Volvo Golf Champions in Bahrain, recently sent me four images comparing the original Method putter to his new one, a customized Nike Method Core.
The original Method putter has grooves milled directly into the head that are partially filled by a polymer. The edge of the groove that remains exposed grabs the ball and helps get it rolling faster, according to Nike. In the new Method Core putter, the same polymer groove technology is housed in a red insert, instead of in the putter head itself.
As you can see in the photos below, the two heads are nearly identical, but Casey's Method Core (which is based on the Method 001's head) has a plumber's neck instead of a slant neck.
"After trying the Method Core putters I was a fan of the way the ball rolled off the face," Casey told me in an e-mail. "So I asked [Nike's] David Franklin if he could combine the face of a Core with my traditional head shape. He obliged so what you see here is a bit of a David Franklinstein creation!"
