ORLANDO, Florida — Arnold Palmer owned something like 2,500 putters at the time of his death.
That says two things. Arnie never stopped searching in his quest to make more putts. And Arnie never found his Holy Grail.
So when a guy from India who majored in film study at New York University showed up at the Bay Hill Golf Club on the eve of the Arnold Palmer Invitational, it made counter-intuitive sense. Nakul Sood, after NYU, returned home to India, made a few documentaries as a budding filmmaker (because he didn’t want to do Bollywood-like movie musicals) and suddenly noticed a niche.
India? Film study? So what? Arnie never saw a putter he wouldn’t try. If he was still with us, you can bet the King would have grilled Sood about his clubs and worn a path on the practice green trying them out. Arnie’s only question about the putters would have been, Do they hole putts? That is what he cared about, what all of us cared about.
My answer to that question, after I took a brief test drive Wednesday afternoon using the SK-1 model is, Yes. But I’m no expert, obviously, since my fleet of putters is approximately 2,477 fewer than Mr. Palmer’s.
Sood took a break from chatting with assorted tour players and caddies to explain Incred Golf to a writer. The idea for his putters came from a strange place—video of several players famously hitting putts with the toe of their putters from awkward lies around greens, including Vijay Singh remarkably holing a “putt” from the rough dangerously near the bulkhead at TPC Sawgrass’ famed 17th green. (You can see the video on YouTube.com by searching for Eureka Putters.)
Swinging a regular blade putter with the toe forward as the hitting surface feels oddly easy to keep on plane (on target) and has a pendulum-like feel, Sood deduced. So why not make a putter designed to do that? It was two hours of inspiration to design, about 12 hours of machine-work to produce a prototype.
That’s the short version, anyway. The longer version is that Sood, after NYU, returned home to India, made a few documentaries as a budding filmmaker (because he didn’t want to Dollywood-like movie musicals) and suddenly noticed a niche. Cameras and stabilizers routinely cost tens of thousands of dollars for film productions. He was able to develop better versions of steady-cams that cost only $1,000 when models on the market went for $50,000-plus. He also created the first ambi-sonic microphones, which captured the surrounding ambient noise, and improved camera dollies (and reduced their cost) by using roller-blade wheels. Sood originally knew nothing about engineering but he had a chance meeting with a man who knew who to work with metals in a small shop in New Delhi, India, across the Yamuna River, a Ganges River tributary.
Sood had always been attracted to golf. His father had access to a course and Sood received ten lessons as a youngster, just enough to get hooked on the game. After his film equipment success, Sood returned to golf.
A few years ago, he developed his putt-with-the-toe putters. It is easiest to understand the concept on the Eureka SK1 model, so named because Shiv Kapur, an Indian player who was a successful tour player, helped design it. The SK stands for the Sood-Kapur affiliation. The putter’s shaft angles into a tube-shaped piece that connects with the back center of the putter blade. Picture that short tube structure as the toe of a putter and you get the idea. After that, it comes down to weight and balances and different materials for feel.
Sood calls his putter reverse face-balanced and face-down putters due to their unique design. I didn’t have to stay at a Holiday Inn recently to recognize the putter’s pendulum feel. I started to tell Sood that the “putter practically swings itself” but he finished that sentence for me before I could get it out. He said that is a common comment about the model.
The SK1 is Incred Golf’s most popular version. A close second is the Blade, which looks fairly similar to standard blades but with a low back-side line. It is machined out of a solid hunk of metal with a standard 3-degree face angle that some tour players flattened to 2 degrees if they’re on smooth greens.
The third member of Incred Golf’s big three is the Black Mallet, a large rectangular-shaped mallet for players who like bigger putter heads. It has the same pendulum feel as the other, just with a little more comforting heft.
Incred Golf is still in the early stages of becoming a golf business. Step one is to get it in the hands of tour players, whose use helps with validation and advertising. Imagine, for instance, if Rory McIlroy were to win a Masters with one of these putters. Any putter model he used would lead to thousands of instant sales, ala the 1986 Masters when Jack Nicklus used the oversize MacGregor Response putter.
Sood showed his putters to McIlroy and Tommy Fleetwood in Dubai earlier this year.
“They were both very cool about it,” Sood said. “I went up to Rory and said, Whenever you have five minutes, I’d like to show this to you. Rory said, I won’t have five minutes today but I’ll come by tomorrow. Tommy did the same. And both of them came back. I wasn’t even at my putter bag when Tommy came. I was eating a Popsicle. I rushed over to talk to him, I was holding the Popsicle behind my back and he laughed and said, You’re having a lolly!”
A number of PGA Tour Champions players have expressed interest in Sood’s putters. Another player whose interest was piqued was Bryson DeChambeau. One of his techs did some robotic testing with it and said Sood’s putter got the ball rolling (versus spinning) two to three times quicker off the face than a standard putter.
While on the Bay Hill practice green early this week, a sales rep for another golf product told Sood, “You’ve got the best four putters on this green right now.”
Compliments are nice but the real validation will be players using his putters and having success. The putter retails for $399.
Golf is ultimately about making putts. Golfers still chase that goal today, just like Arnie did once upon a time.
