Designed by Clay Long, this gigantic putter was saved from obscurity when it helped make history in 1986.
In 1986, Clay Long of MacGregor Golf set out to create a “corrective putter” to help golfers better line up their putts. In the process of doing this, he realized that he would have to make a larger putter to bring his vision to reality. This led him to design the MacGregor Response, an oversized putter with a very large MOI.
It was too big to be called a putter…massive, thick, heavy, and far too bulky. Indeed, it was like a heap of raw iron. But that didn’t stop Jack Nicklaus from using this putter in the Masters, skyrocketing its popularity after his back-9 comeback leading to his win in 1986.
For MacGregor Golf, their putters were never a main focus, having only sold 1,200 putters the previous year in 1985. They made a bold prediction of selling 6,000 putters in 1986. The day after Nicklaus’s Masters win, they had over 5,000 orders on the books. By the end of that year, they sold more than 300,000 putters.
Unfortunately, the hype did not last forever. Response sales dwindled over the next few years and it was taken off the market. It’s not every day an unconventional design has such a big impact on the golf world, but when it does, the response is wild.
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