Anser

The Ping Anser traces back to January 1966, when Karsten Solheim sketched the design on the jacket of a 78 rpm record, according to Ping's own history page. The maker's page credits the putter's name to Solheim's wife Louise, who suggested "Answer" and then proposed dropping the "w." Worldwide Golf Shops' account of the original putter describes a thin face outlined by dense weights on either end and a strip of thick metal along the bottom to lower the center of gravity, and credits the design with lifting sales from $50,000 a year to more than $800,000 within two years. Golf.com and beeclassifieds.beenews.com both point to the same blade-style head with heel-toe weighting as the throughline for everything that followed, and beeclassifieds places the putter's rise across the 1960s and 70s.

The line's middle decades show Ping revisiting the Anser shape rather than replacing it. The Anser 5 arrived in 1990 with heel-toe weighting reported by golfbluebook.com to minimize twisting on off-center strikes, and the Anser 2 followed in 2000, described by masterofthegreens.com as a refinement carried by tour players. The G2i Anser C in 2003 brought a proprietary insert that golfbluebook.com says was built for a softer feel and sound. By the mid to late 2000s the Redwood era had begun: the 2007 Redwood Anser drew golfmagic.com's note that Lee Westwood and Miguel Angel Jimenez had already put versions in their bags, and the 2008 Redwood Anser was, in putterzone.com's account, the hottest putter of that tournament, with Louis Oosthuizen sinking numerous key putts on his way through the field.

The 2010s brought a run of finish and face experiments under the Anser name rather than a change in shape. The Karsten 1959 Anser X in 2011 carried a soft elastomer cavity insert per golfbluebook.com, the Karsten TR and Scottsdale TR Ansers of 2014 introduced variable-depth face milling, and the Vault line, from the 2016 PING Vault Anser through the 2018 Vault 2.0 Dale Anser, moved to a fully milled True-Roll face reported by pluggedingolf.com, with essential.golf tracing the Vault 2.0's shape back to Allan Dale Solheim. The TR 1966 Anser, also from 2016, paired that True-Roll face with a manganese bronze PVD finish, according to mygolfway.com.

The 2020s have split the Anser into a mainline blade and a Tour-grade milled counterpart. The 2021 Anser carried a Dual-Durometer insert that golfalot.com describes as a softer front Pebax layer over a firmer back layer, and the same outlet found the blade less forgiving on short putts than a mallet despite added heel and toe weighting, a criticism echoed in its own review of struggling with the face opening and closing on short putts. The PLD Milled Anser that followed is built, per mortongolfsales.com, for a slight-arc player with a right-miss tendency, and thepeoplesclubs.com calls it the winningest putter in golf history, a claim about pedigree rather than a settled figure. Community opinion on the PLD Milled Anser is split the same way the eras have always split it: praise for a milled face's premium feel set against criticism that it is harder to line up without an alignment aid. The 2025 Scottsdale Anser 4 and PLD Milled Anser 30 carry that same tension forward, with Ping's own Canadian product page listing the Scottsdale 4's one-piece PEBAX insert and 345 gram head weight, and the newer PLD Milled 30 drawing praise, per opinion on record, for combining blade feel with mid-mallet forgiveness.