Revised April 7, 2026, 12:58 p.m. ET
AUGUSTA, Ga. — While J.J. Spaun secured the 2025 U.S. Open with a LAB putter, Wyndham Clark captured the 2023 U.S. Open with an Odyssey Jailbird, and Payne Stewart won the 1999 U.S. Open using a SeeMore FGP bronze putter, it was arguably Jack Nicklaus who ignited the most significant demand for a golf club from a single tournament. This occurred when he claimed the 1986 Masters title with a MacGregor Response ZT.
“Until that moment, it was just seen as a quirky, unusual putter,” remarked Clay Long, who was MacGregor Golf’s former head of research and development and the designer behind the oversized aluminum putter, in an interview with Golfweek. “However, things quickly became very serious.”
MacGregor initially projected annual sales of 6,000 putters. Yet, by the time of the Masters, they had already sold 20,000. “It had already achieved success for us,” he noted.
But the company was unprepared for the explosive surge in demand that followed the ’86 Masters: “On Monday, we received 5,000 orders between 8 a.m. and noon. By year-end, we had sold 150,000,” he recalled. “We simply couldn’t manufacture them fast enough. The factory was brimming with putters.”
At the July sales meeting that year, MacGregor presented Nicklaus with a red Pontiac Fiero. This sales award was originally intended for the top salesman who sold the most commemorative iron sets, celebrating Nicklaus’s 25th anniversary as a pro, but those irons didn’t generate nearly the sales volume of the Response ZT.
Long, who continues to craft premium milled putters decades later, is now collaborating with Sean Toulon of Toulon Design, a Callaway Golf division, to produce a limited-edition tribute to the ’86 Masters. During the 1990s and 2000s, he and Toulon worked concurrently at Cobra and TaylorMade, forging a lasting friendship. Speaking from his Carlsbad, California residence, Long shared that Toulon approached him about a year ago for a collaboration, with both agreeing they didn’t want to create an exact reproduction.
“It’s a more contemporary version of the putter, though it closely resembles the original,” Long stated, referring to the hybrid stainless steel and aluminum putter named the Small Batch Columbus, set to officially launch on Thursday. “I’ve been using it, and it feels exceptionally good.” [Toulon mentioned on Instagram that Long has already shot below his age four times with this putter.]
Long finds it hard to believe four decades have passed since he engineered one of golf’s most iconic putters. Intriguingly, the club originated from an error. It was initially designed as a corrective putter face, angled differently from the sight line with an overhang, but the USGA deemed it non-conforming. Long was impressed by the putter’s performance and crafted several models without the overhang. “It evolved into a high-inertia putter instead,” he recounted.
Nicklaus stumbled upon it in Long’s office one day. To simply say “the rest is history” would overlook some of the captivating details.
“He asked me, ‘Is this a joke?’ Then he tried it, liked its roll, and requested I send him a couple to test,” Long explained.
Nicklaus experimented with it at Loxahatchee Club in Jupiter, Florida, setting a course record. He added the club to his bag at the start of the 1986 season in Hawaii.
“His performance was dismal before the Masters,” Long noted. “We were concerned he might stop using it.”
On the final Sunday round, Long was alone at his Albany, Georgia home, engrossed in his taxes with the tournament playing in the background. “And then I stopped doing my taxes,” he remembered.
Long was soon inundated with calls from his former Ole Miss golf teammates, all eager to know if his putter was responsible for the incredible feats they were witnessing. When Nicklaus sank the putt on 17 and raised the putter in triumph, Long erupted in celebration.
“I was running around, yelling; I was so hoarse the next day,” he recalled. “And I was pleading, ‘Please don’t three-putt on the last hole.’”
Long estimates MacGregor sold approximately 350,000 Response ZT putters at a wholesale price of $39 before production ceased. The putter’s initial designation, “The Solution,” had to be changed when MacGregor discovered, just before its release, that Titleist had already trademarked the name. “Response” was a shaft name MacGregor had already registered. The first 800 putters, including the one Nicklaus famously used at the Masters, bore Long’s signature, which was later replaced by a “patent pending” mark. Nicklaus continued using the putter until 1988, then switched to an oversized model for the subsequent decade.
Long maintained his association with Nicklaus, providing design services for Nicklaus Golf for several years when the company operated in the equipment sector. They had previously launched a 20th anniversary ZT Response putter. Now, a new generation of golfers can once again savor the enchantment of the ’86 Masters.
“Beyond golf, that stands as the greatest sporting spectacle I’ve ever witnessed,” he declared, referring to the 1986 Masters, “and having contributed to it is the pinnacle of my professional journey.”