Putter

This 1940 Otey Crisman putter sits at the front end of the line, listed by sportantiques.co.uk as a mallet style putter with a hickory shaft, cataloged under the era heading 1900-1949, Circa 1940's. The same source also lists a design_year of 1946 and an origin_story_year of 1946, which sits oddly against the 1940 release date, worth noting rather than reconciled here. The head is described as bronze with a wooden back, carrying a polished leather grip and an offset head, with sportantiques.co.uk noting a flat front at the handle to help with alignment and three alignment lines to the crown. The listing also describes a soft metal brass insert embedded in the aluminum head, with two lead weights on either side of the insert creating what the source calls a center balance, reducing torque and improving solid contact. The head carries a stamped Otey Crisman autograph, and '15HW', and the example on record is described as being in good usable condition.

On feel, sportantiques.co.uk quotes a positive owner impression: an Otey gives you a live hit, I know where the ball is going every time. Community opinion gathered elsewhere echoes that, with praise for the live hit feel and consistent feedback, though none of this rises above opinion in our files.

Where this release sits in the wider Otey Crisman story is harder to pin down from what's here, but sportantiques.co.uk's notes point to a line that carried real tour pedigree: the source credits Jimmy Demaret's 1947 Masters win to an Otey putter, and states that 6 Masters Champions carried an Otey putter, with 27 of 83 players in the 1957 Masters field carrying one. Those claims belong to the line's reputation broadly rather than to this specific 1940 head, and they come from sportantiques.co.uk's reporting rather than from Otey Crisman's own materials, which are not represented here.