Slippery Frog Review

Grade: A

I'm not sure where to get this product now. I bought it as a kit a few years ago from Ralph Maltby's Golfworks, but he no longer carries it. Powerbilt also had a branded version, but it's no longer on their website.

As I said, I built it a couple of years ago, but had never really tried it until this summer. I stuck it in my bag on a whim one day, and used it five times in the first round. It's stayed in the bag for more than a month now.

The Slippery Frog is essentially a 3 wood head on a double bend putter shaft. Nice and heavy, it has a huge, polished, rounded bottom and 26 degrees of loft.

You have to park a certain amount of pride to use this club. People will look at you funny and ask "Is that legal?". It is -- or at least it was. Low handicappers will snort until they see you use it to punch a shot off a tree root flush against the trunk, under the overhaning branches to the middle of the fairway 100 yards away.

You can use this thing in dozens of different situations. Here are my favorites:

1) Chipping from the "frog hair" (hence its name). Line it up like a putter and give it a short stroke. The ball will pop up and hit the green running. The only problem may be too much backspin.

2) Punching the ball back onto the fairway from a bad lie. There's nothing worse than deciding to make the safe play -- punching the ball back onto the fairway, and then not making it. Tight lies, roots, tall grass -- all can ruin a punch. But not with the Frog. It is the safest play in the book.

3) Lobbing the ball out of a sand trap. With a full swing, I can loft this thing more than a hundred yards out of the sand.

4) Punching it out from under a tree. Deloft the thing by pressing the hands forward, move it back in your stance, and whack it seventy five yards down the fairway.

5) As a desperation move. When nothing else is working, you can't miss with this club. Becuase it's so short, it is deadly accurate, and with a full swing from the fairway, you can hit it 150 yards. I once finished the last three holes in a round using this club exclusively. Nothing else was working that day. I parred a 5, a 4 and bogied a 3. (O.K. My putter was working fine).

The only reason this thing doesn't get an A+ is that I'm not sure where you can buy it. Maybe EBay.