I have a Ping Anser 2 I bought about 10 years ago. Too many missed putts have led to the shaft being bent. I want to change the it....

I KNOW that PING does the ball bearing thing. No need to tell me that. I heard you can drill out the bottom of the hosel and use a punch and hammer to knock it out. I drilled which was much easier than I expected. I punched and punched, and punched...I broke the punch after switching from a regular to a sledge hammer. FML.



Anyone tried to do the same thing? I'm not sending it to PING have pay out the wazzoo and have no putter for only God knows how long.

[This message has been edited by CStewTAMU (edited 7/24/2012 9:56p).]

Pulling the current shaft is the problem...LOL. I don't even think Golfsmith (which is 100 miles away) would even touch it. I did ask a local clubmaker and he told me that he usually didn't touch Ping putters as most people don't want their putter to have a hold drilled in it (which is fine with me). He said it's either that or send it to PING.

Like I said, Ping is unique from all other manufactuers. They lodge a ball bearing in the hosel to fuse the putterhead and shaft. I'm not sure, but they may not even use epoxy. I read and asked around on the net, and they said it's easy to remove if you don't mind drilling out the bottom of the hosel and using a punch to pop the ball bearing out. I did that. Drilling was easy. The ball bearing is being impossible. I thought drilling would be the hard part with the ball bearing popping out easily. Boy I was wrong.

I put my putter in a vice, drilled, and pounded on the ball bearing with a punch and sledge hammer. No luck.

[This message has been edited by CStewTAMU (edited 7/24/2012 11:11p).]

Maybe try a press instead of using a punch and hammer?

Get a new putter if you don't make any putts with that thing

I finally got the putter head off with the hammer and pin punch. I made the hole in the hosel a little bigger to ensure I could get a better hit on the center of the ball bearing. If you hit the ball bearing off center in the slightest bit, it won't come out no matter how hard you hit it. That's all it took--just took some frustation before I figured that out.

I've reshafted the putter with a graphite shaft from an old 90's era Yonex driver and a Scott Cameron grip. I also shortened the club to 33". This allows my arms to hang more naturally and grip the club without choking down 2-3 inches. I think it was 35" before. Most standard length putters are too long off the shelf. I'm 5'11", maybe 6' with only a 72" reach finger tip to finger tip and my arms hanging down naturally wanted to grip the club closer to the metal than the end of the grip. It's perfect now. Time will tell if I putt better.