Rory McIlroy had a putter problem. A Memphis golf shop came to the rescue

A man walked into Edwin Watts Golf Shop in East Memphis around 6:30 p.m. Friday, about 30 minutes before closing time. He had two putters and needed them to be the same length.

Chris Oden, an employee working that shift, looked at the two clubs. There couldn’t have been more than an ⅛-inch difference, Oden observed.

“Who’s going to notice that?” he wondered aloud.

“Rory McIlroy,” Harry Diamond said.

Diamond is McIlroy’s longtime caddie and he had been sent there by his boss. McIlroy has been tinkering with a new putter this week at the FedEx St. Jude Championship, eschewing the TaylorMade Spider putter for a Scotty Cameron Phantom X 5.5 to “freshen it up.”

“It was zero testing process. It was go into the garage and see what I had and just pull a couple out and go have a few putts,” McIlroy explained earlier this week.

After two rounds in Memphis, he wanted to make an adjustment. One problem? The trucks that do that sort of thing on site at TPC Southwind were already gone.

Enter the folks at Edwin Watts Golf about 15 minutes away. Diamond arrived in the store and Oden led him back to fellow employee Jim Hudson.

Initially, Hudson waved them off. It was too late for another club repair. Until he found out who owned this putter.

“This is Rory’s? We can definitely make an exception for that,” Hudson recalled saying during a telephone conversation with The Commercial Appeal once McIlroy’s third round ended Saturday.

Hudson then went to work. To the naked eye, he noted, you couldn’t tell one putter was longer than the other. But the Spyder wound up being 3/16-inch longer.

So he cut the grip off the Scotty Cameron, cut down the putter shaft, and replaced the grip. The process only took 10 minutes, but it was a stressful 10 minutes.

“Knowing it was Rory’s putter, knowing the stakes they’re playing for, you take a little extra time to make sure it’s perfect,” Hudson said. “Usually you measure twice and cut once. For this, I measured twice and cut twice, so I didn’t cut too much at first. But the most stressful part was getting the new grip on straight.”

Hudson has worked for Edwin Watts Golf for 19 years, including the last year-and-a-half in the company’s East Memphis location. He has done work on Memphis basketball coach Penny Hardaway’s golf clubs.

This, though, was an entirely different level of pressure.

Hudson was relieved, then, when McIlroy sank a birdie putt of just under eight feet on TPC Southwind’s first hole to begin his Saturday. OK, Hudson thought, “it’s going to work a little bit.”

Indeed, once McIlroy’s third round was complete, he had attempted fewer putts (25) than Thursday and Friday and the total distance on those putts (78.5) was longer than the first two rounds as well.

He was still within striking distance of leader Lucas Glover, five shots back at 9-under.

“I still can’t believe I really just cut down Rory’s putter during a playoff event,” Hudson said.