If insects played interspecies golf, betting on the praying mantis in the field would be a sound strategy. Tasked with a par-5 their powerful lunch snaring front legs could deliver a monster drive and if other bugs started to show them up on the leaderboard the Mantis could easily paralyze them with a quick neck nibble and get away with it too. Officials wouldn’t even see the infraction thanks to a Mantis’ innate camouflage ability.
What does this flight of fancy have to do with a new putter? Surprisingly plenty. The design element that sets Mantis apart is the fact that it is grass blade green which forces golfers to keep their eye on the ball and not their putter, a common performance hampering faux pas that leads to more three-putts. Think about it, when is the last time you heard a golf pro say, “keep your eye on the club?” With Mantis your putter blends into the turf and your eyes key onto the ball.
Over the years we’ve seen white putters, gold putters, and even a red putter but whereas these color flourishes were flashy sartorial choices with Mantis the colour is the concept. The putter blends into the background putting the spotlight on the ball. After spending a couple hours getting to the know the Mantis ‘B’ on the putting green I found that my visual acuity was sharpened increasing my accuracy and lessening my miss distance from the hole on longer putts.
Putter aficionados feeling a tingling sense of déjà vu may recall Nike’s green foray a few years back with their IC flat stick. But the Swooshters opted for a much more muted shade so the invisibility effect was less pronounced.
