Unitized

Our review of the Nike Unitized putters, published in 2006, found a line built around a single idea: joining head and shaft into what appears to be one continuous piece. The process, which Nike called unitization, involved welding the shaft to the head, smoothing the weld, and nickel plating the whole assembly. We described the effect as a putter that looks like any other from a distance, until you get in close and see the seam disappear.

At that point the line carried four heads, the Tempo, Retro, Neo, and Techno. We noted that the Tempo drew on familiar Anser-style lines and the Retro echoed older TP Mills shaping, while the Neo and Techno struck us as designs Nike could call its own. We were skeptical that the Tempo would find its way into Tiger Woods' bag over his Scotty Cameron GSS Newport II, and said as much.

On feel, our review was blunt: we found the putter cold in the hand, not something we expected to get to know well over time. We also pushed back on an early report that had circulated about the construction, and confirmed through our own testing, magnet in hand, that the head and shaft were not literally one piece of material, whatever the plating made them look like. We attributed the heads across the line to CNC milled 303 stainless steel, per Nike's own listing, while flagging that our test magnet's reaction to the finish left us with some doubt about what was underneath the plating.

Golflink.com later listed a Unitized release under the names Mako, Tecno, Neo, and Retro, dated to 2008, a lineup that swaps the Tempo and Techno names of our original review for Mako and Tecno. That figure comes from Golflink's own reporting and has not been separately verified here.