If Charles Owens was going to jump-start a late-blooming golf career, he had to fix his putting. He was 51 and playing on the Senior PGA Tour. He had bad legs and a painful back. And he had the yips — involuntary hand and arm movements that caused him to yank his putts one way or the other.

“I had the yips so bad,” he told Golf Digest, “that I would freeze up on a two-footer.”

Weary of the many putters that had failed him, Owens drew up plans for an extra-long one and gave them to a machinist friend. On Christmas Day 1983, at a golf course near his home in Tampa, Fla., Owens tested the machinist’s handiwork, a 52-inch putter. He held it with his left hand against his chest; his right hand clasped it about halfway down the shaft. Within 15 minutes, he knew his new putter, christened Slim Jim, would change his game.

With the putter in his bag, he won two tournaments in 1986 and more money than he had ever had — a satisfying reward for an African-American golfer who had grown up poor in segregated Winter Haven, Fla., developed a passion for a game that was reserved mostly for whites and carved his first clubs out of tree limbs.

“I found the key to the lock,” Owens told People magazine in 1986. “With this putter, you can’t jerk the ball when you’re nervous. It might look funny, but missing putts can make a brave man cry. I just had to find my own way.”