White Hot (original insert model)

The original White Hot insert shipped in 2003, and golfalot.com describes its insert as made from a golf ball, same urethane as Callaway's Rule 35 ball cover. That's the detail that separates this release from a generic soft-face insert story: Odyssey wasn't borrowing a feel, it was borrowing a cover material from its own parent company's ball line.

Golfalot's review credits the insert with a soft but firm feel, and calls out that it improved on the smaller black insert that came before it, particularly on off-centre strikes. The same review goes further, stating that this iconic feeling has never been improved upon and that over half of the tour players still use the old insert. That's one outlet's opinion, offered years after the fact, but it's a strong claim to make about a putter this far removed from its release year, and it's the kind of thing this Record exists to hold onto.

Against the rest of the White Hot line, the 2003 original sits as the reference point. Later variations and the White Hot Pro family that followed are measured, fairly or not, by whether they recapture what this insert did first. Whether they did is a question the reader can answer with a putter in hand better than any catalog page can answer it for them.