As the Tour travels from Florida’s East Coast to the West, and the buzz from The Players Championship slowly fizzles out, it’s back to work for many at Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club for the 2026 Valspar Championship.

One of those already out on the grounds of the aptly named Copperhead Course, just outside of Tampa, Florida, was PGA Tour winner Andrew Novak, with an afternoon filled with putter testing.

The putter in question is a slant-neck Odyssey Seven putter featuring the Tour-exclusive Damascus insert.

“It’s similar head shape, so it’s not a huge change for me,” said Novak, who gamed an Odyssey Ai-One Milled Seven T S for the past year. “Just change up the visuals a little bit. … Hopefully, it will help my eyes a bit. It’s coming off the face great. Repped it for one day here, so we’ll see how it goes, but I am liking the early returns on it.”

When Novak first made it to the PGA Tour, he used an Odyssey Toulon San Diego blade before switching to an Odyssey Ai-One Milled Two T CH. With neither flatstick did Novak crack the top 50 on Tour in Strokes Gained: Putting, but a switch in style changed his fortunes.

Adding the Seven head to start 2025, Novak climbed to eighth in overall putting average on Tour, along with earning his first victory alongside good friend Ben Griffin at the Zurich Classic of New Orleans.

On-site Monday at the Valspar, Novak worked with Callaway Tour Rep Harrison Shih to match the similar clean feel of his Ai-One Seven. The pair filled in the lines on either wing of the mallet with a similar paint to the head color, with Novak, “not a huge alignment sort of guy.”

After that, with an afternoon session under his belt with the Damascus insert, Novak noticed a better feel and more feedback on the greens.

“I would say audibly, is maybe where I was seeing most of the difference,” Novak said about the early testing. “I felt there was maybe slightly more feedback versus what I was using before, the feel was not much different off the face so far. I’ll have to rep it a little bit more to have like a concrete answer on that. But the first thing I did notice was slightly different sound. I felt maybe slightly more feedback on this one.”

While the Damascus insert may help Novak’s feedback and what Shih believes has the potential for better speed control on the greens, it also just looks great, thanks to the unique milling of the material.

“It’s definitely beautiful, it’s pretty thing,” Novak said. “It’s got a different little swirl to it looks cool. But again, you know, how does it perform? That’s what I’m really looking for.”