Tiger Woods'
2001 Scotty Cameron Back-Up Putter
There are only a handful of
pieces of sports memorabilia that we can be relatively certain will be
collected for centuries - Babe Ruth's bat; Muhammad Ali's gloves; Michael
Jordan's jerseys. When it comes to golf, there's one such item that we would
add to the list - Tiger Woods' Scotty Cameron putter.
Offered here is one of Tiger Woods' actual Scotty Cameron putters from 2001.
Now, this was not the putter that Tiger used to win 13 Major Championships;
that putter (and yes, he apparently only used one) is still owned by Tiger
and was valued recently by us in the April issue of Golf Magazine at between
$500,000 and $1,000,000. The offered putter is what's famously known as a
Scotty Cameron "back-up" - a putter produced in the exact specifications as
Tiger's famous "gamer" should something happen to the original putter and it
need to be called into duty. Scotty Cameron generally produced 1 or 2
"back-up" putters for Tiger each year they worked together. Tiger would try
out the back-ups, and even practice with them to ensure they were to his
liking, but (so the legend goes) Tiger only used his one trusty gamer in
actual tournament play.
As you can imagine, since only a handful of Tiger Woods Scotty Cameron
back-up putters were ever produced, even fewer have ever reached the
collector market. The handful that have were generally auctioned by Tiger
Woods for charity at his own "Tiger Jam" event, and we know he once gave
Steve Williams one so that Stevie too could auction it for charity in New
Zealand.
This putter comes with a certificate of authenticity from Scotty Cameron,
who describes it as follows "Made for Tiger Woods, Tour GSS Newport II in
GSS with rare vertical stamping". We have also included a photograph of the
original 2002 letter that accompanied this piece, also from Scotty Cameron,
in which Scotty specifically refers to this putter as from 2001. 2001 is a
significant year to us, as Tiger completed the Tiger Slam in 2001. Our
consignor is currently searching his house for that original letter, which
he recently misplaced, so while we have the photo of that letter, the
original letter may or may not accompany this piece.