People commemorate champions in many different ways. Some players have their jersey numbers retired with the team to which they were loyal. Others build statues in honor of those players. Karsten Solheim, in the 1970s, found the most unique possible way to honor great golfers. Although his way didn’t involve statues, his collection at the PING Headquarters is far showier.
Solheim was looking for a way to thank the players who had used a PING putter to grab a win. He wanted to find a unique way to reward them for their loyalty, and that’s when he came up with the golden idea.
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The businessman decided he would commemorate the victories of all the PING putting champions by molding two gold-plated replicas of the winning putter. The replicas were engraved with the name of the golf pro and the name of the tournament he or she had won. Solheim kept one at the headquarters and gave the other to the event champion as a souvenir.
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Little did Solheim know that his intriguing way of paying homage to the PING victors would additionally grow into one of the most valuable collections on the planet. What started as a few pros being honored soon grew into a few thousand. More and more golf professionals began winning with PING putters, and the designer’s gold-plated collections steadily grew.
Where in the PING Headquarters are the putters stored?
In the past five decades, the collections have grown to over 30,000 replica putters. They sit in a room in what was once a closet right in the middle of PING Headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona. The closet has now been turned into a vault, also known as ‘The Gold Putter Vault’. All its sides are lined with gold-plated putter copies.
The oldest putter in the vault belongs to John Barnum, who saw the first PING putter win at the Cajun Classic in 1962. The collection also included 106 major championship-winning putters from the PGA Tour, the LPGA Tour, and the PGA Tour Champions.
The collection also comprises replicas of a few wedges, including Bubba Watson‘s 2012 Masters-winning putter. Tiger Woods‘ amateur-winning Ansers are also among them. What began as a rare occurrence now sees multiple putters added to the vault almost every week.
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Which famous golf pros’ putter do you think we will see in the vault next? Let us know in the comments below.
The post Inside the Most Expensive Putter Collection in Golf: Tiger Woods’ Golden Antique and 3,000 Other Models Grace the Ever-Growing PING HQ in Phoenix appeared first on EssentiallySports.
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