Austin Lemeiux, the son of a famous hockey player, was in the field this week at the PGA Tour’s Butterfield Bermuda Championship. Despite the attention that Mario Lemieux’s boy got, the amateur missed the cut by shooting four over for 36 holes.
The hockey them, however, is not going away on the island in the North Atlantic.
Tour rookie Ben Silverman is in a battle to keep his card for 2027, and he’s become desperate enough to try the rarely seen hockey putting grip that Tony Finau began tinkering with several weeks ago. It’s no surprise that Silverman is a Canadian and quite familiar with the feel of a grip that is flat on both sides.
Silverman debuted his new putter this week, and it might have been a quirky footnote if not for him shooting 63-67 to be tied for third heading into the weekend at Port Royal Golf Course. Let’s just say he hasn’t slapped it around on the greens.
“It's fun for me playing with a hockey stick as my grip for the putter and it was rolling great today,” Silverman said after the first round, when he made eight birdies.
Silverman, 38, said he didn’t know anything about a hockey-style grip until he saw Finau practicing with it ahead of the Bank of Utah Championship. Silverman didn’t even speak to the six-time tour winner but stopped his caddie as they were leaving the putting green. “I was. like, let me see that one second. What is that?” Silverman said. “It's hockey, right up my alley, I'm a big hockey guy, love it.”
Finau, it should be noted, missed his first two cuts using the grip and made the weekend in his third try with a T-41 in the Baycurrent Classic.
After Utah, Silverman reached out to Tim Wright, the CEO of the grip’s manufacturer, Wisconsin-based Caliber Golf. “He turned it around in like six days for me and the putter is feeling awesome,” Silverman said.
“I'd say it was a super-fast learning curve. The only thing that felt different was the vibration of the ball coming off the face is different than a normal putter shaft. It almost has a hollow feel kind of like an old persimmon wood.”
The golfer explained how he uses the putter: “So the hockey stick blade is flat on both sides. I like to have the putter grip in the palms, lifelines in my hands anyways so it fits perfectly in my palms. I do a double interlock left-hand low grip, but you can literally hold it anywhere as long as your palms are on it and you're going to be square to the face, so that's what I like about it.”
Silverman has not played enough rounds this season to be in the tour’s official strokes-gained stats, but he clearly has struggled in numerous areas of his game, notching seven missed cuts in his last nine starts. He played beautifully in his most successful weekend, tying for third in July’s ISCO Championship.
Still, Silverman likely will need to go on a big hot streak to keep his card. Needing to get into the top 100 after the FedEx Fall, he began the week 143rd, and his current position would get him to 122. There are four events left after this week.