Golf can be an expensive game. But the putter that netted Jim Furyk an $11.35 million payday Sunday at the Tour Championship cost him a whopping $39 at a discount golf shop near Boston.
Furyk picked up the used "Yes! Sophia" putter at Joe & Leigh's Discount Golf Pro Shop at Pine Oaks Golf Course in Easton, Mass., earlier this month. He bought it during a quiet visit to the shop after the third round of the Deutsche Bank Championship at TPC Boston in Norton, The Enterprise of Brockton first reported.
That same putter was in Furyk's hands when he made a 2-foot putt for par that clinched the $1.35 million Tour Championship and another $10 million for winning the FedEx Cup.
The putter landed at the discount shop when two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Paul Szep traded it in, The Boston Globe reported. Szep, who worked at the Globe from 1967 to 2001, now lives in Florida and is an avid golfer with a 7 handicap.
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"He made the putt and we got excited, and I'm sure people thought we were a little crazy that we were getting so excited over a golf tournament,'' store co-owner Leigh Bader said, according to the Globe. "[Winning $11.35 million], using 'our' putter? We were rooting for him, because he was such a nice guy when he came in. Friendly, humble, unassuming.''
Bargain Bin