Armed And Dangerous

On Jan. 20, the Sunday before he was scheduled to compete in the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, Adam Scott was up the road in the beachside community of Encinitas, Calif., at Scotty Cameron’s putting studio. There, Scott stroked putts with an assortment of putters in his seemingly never-ending quest to find a reliable replacement for the broomstick-length putter he wielded with the now-banned anchoring method on the way to winning the 2013 Masters and reaching world No. 1 in 2014.

As Scott patiently waited for Jordan Spieth to finish going through his paces in the studio before the pair headed out to play a casual practice round together, his curiosity got the better of him. Leaning against a wall, Scott spied an arm-lock style putter. He grabbed it for a test drive, pressing the grip against the inside of his left forearm, and holed a string of putts. Call it serendipity. After hours of crunching numbers and being captured by high-speed cameras while testing everything but an arm-lock model, Scott inserted the rogue putte...