He stopped short of calling himself a collector. But when Abraham Ancer actually thought about it, he admitted that he has about 60 putters at his home in San Antonio, Texas. “I have a ton of putters just because sometimes I go through phases of tinkering and trying other putters and making my gamer jealous, as I like to call that,” Ancer says. “So, I like to maybe see something different for maybe a week or so. “And then I go back to my gamer.” Ancer normally plays with an Odyssey No. 5 putter. But in that rather vast collection are a couple of counterbalanced putters that help him refine his rhythm and set-up when he needs to put that gamer in its place. Not all of the putters in his collection are the kind that Ancer, who won the World Golf Championships-FedEx St. Jude Invitational in August, might put into play on the PGA TOUR, though. Some are very special — “one of ones that you can’t find anywhere else,” he says. “And that’s the stuff that I kind of like.” There’s a replica of his gamer with an insert made of a Damascus metal that that you can only get in Japan, for example. And the ones that Joe Toulon, Callaway’s putter guru, made that are stamped with the logo of Ancer’s tequila company, Flecha Azul. “So, there’s a bunch of cool ones that maybe to the naked eye would be like just a normal putter, but it has something that a lot of people don’t know and it’s pretty cool to me,” Ancer says. Ancer keeps 10 or so of the putters leaning at the ready against the wall in his office while the others are housed in the closet. He says when people come to visit, the first thing they do is grab one of the putters and hit a few. “The ones that I actually practice with, or like to see, they’re in my office where the putting mat that I use is,” Ancer says. “So, whenever I’m not doing much, I just get on there and practice a little bit. … “But when I move to my next home, I want to do an actual display of all of my favorite ones, so people can see them and do not keep them just in a closet. I feel bad just having them in there.” Ancer also has golf bags and other meaningful clubs — besides all those putters — that he’s used during his career that he’d like to put on display. One set is the bag, irons and driver that he used when he turned pro in 2013 after earning a degree in multi-disciplinary studies from Oklahoma. Ancer also has the bag that he received when he played in the 2019 Presidents Cup – and the man who is currently ranked No. 4 in the International Team standings will likely add another one of those in 2022. Plus, Ancer is a two-time Olympian, so those bags are special, too. “So that stuff, that just means a lot to me,” Ancer says. “And clubs that I, along the way, have played and, and remembered I’ve hit good shots with or whatever it is. I like to keep the bag that I use and the clubs that I use at the time.” Ancer, who was born in McAllen, Texas, and has dual citizenship, says he probably has seven bags on display at his house in San Antonio. But there are others at his childhood home in Reynosa, Mexico – including his dad’s golf bag and the clubs he used when he first started playing golf. Ancer’s father, Abraham Sr., who died in 2014, was the one who introduced him to the game. He used to take his son to Club Campestre de Reynosa when Ancer was still in diapers, and the precocious youngster started hitting balls as soon as he could stand. “So (my dad’s clubs) definitely hold a lot of sentimental value and I definitely want to keep them forever,” Ancer says. Some of the clubs Ancer used when he was a kid are also safely stored away in Mexico, as well. “Those are some great memories,” he says. “I was tiny, but I grew up playing with way longer clubs than I needed to. I was never like fitted. So that’s why a lot of people that see me play now, I stand really far away from the ball because I just got used to that.”
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