Big John’s Putter: The $280 Reaper Scythe Behind the Internet Invitational Playoff Putt

The 2026 Internet Invitational had been running for two episodes and more than nine hours of footage when it came down to one putt on the 18th green at Ozarks National. Team Finch and Team Ruffels had split 16 matches 8–8. Two players from each side went back out in sudden-death alternate shot, the first extra hole was halved, and on the second Big John, the 12th pick in the draft and a player Dave Portnoy had said in June would not make the field, stood over the putt that would send his team to Day 2 and end Peter Finch’s. He made it. The club in his hands was not a Scotty Cameron or an Odyssey. It was a brass blade with SCYTHE stamped in the sole, made to order by a family company in Frisco, Texas, and it has been the most-asked-about piece of equipment in the field since.

The Putt

The sequence, as Episode 2 showed it: Roger Steele drove well past Big John, whose tee shot found a fairway bunker. Grant Horvat played out of the sand to a few feet. Steele’s putt slid by, and Big John rolled his in. One of the first things said to him afterwards, amid the pile-on, was that the putter might not even be legal. “No, it’s legal,” he said. “It’s legal in this economy.”

He had already explained the club earlier in the day, when someone in his alternate-shot group asked what it was. “It’s called the Reaper. It’s supposed to be like a Grim Reaper sword. It was kind of a gimmick putter. Then I started using it, I started putting good with it, and now I’m stuck with it.” That is the whole origin story, and it is more candid than most tour players manage about their own putters. The Episode 1 commentary had already clocked it: “Great name for that thing. It’s called a Reaper. That thing looks like the scythe.”

The invitation was its own subplot. In a Barstool post on June 1 announcing the prize pool, Portnoy wrote that Big John “will NOT be making the cut.” On camera in Episode 1 he explained that Bob Does Sports had asked for him and he had not cared enough to object. By the end of Episode 2 the crowd around the 18th green was chanting “zero point zero,” the chance Portnoy had given him, and the player himself was saying he had almost not been invited at all.

What the Reaper Scythe Is

A brass blade, made to order in Texas

Reaper Golf describes itself as a family business based in Frisco, Texas, created to share what it calls a patented putter design, with every head developed, designed and milled in the state. The Scythe is the only putter it currently sells. It is a compact blade with a milled face, and each one is built to order rather than pulled from stock: the buyer chooses a brass or stainless steel head, a chrome or black shaft, a black or multicolored “harlequin” grip, a 335-gram standard head or a 355-gram heavy one, and a length from 32 to 36 inches that the company matches to the golfer’s height. A headcover is included and the company offers a 30-day money-back guarantee.

The brass option is the one Big John plays. Reaper’s own description of it is the kind of thing putter makers have said about soft metals for decades: a vintage look, a softer feel at impact and “a distinct ring sound when struck.” The company’s other stated design idea is about setup rather than metal. It says the Scythe lets a golfer line the face up with the shaft, which it argues is easier than squaring a conventional open-looking blade. Reaper does not publish loft or lie on the pages we could read, so if those matter to you, ask before ordering.

What it costs

When WITBhub first catalogued the Scythe on October 27, three days before the playoff aired, the brass head was listed at $265 and the stainless at $280. Both configurations have since moved up $15. It is still less than the mainstream milled blades and mallets the rest of the field plays.

Who Else Plays One

Nobody we track. WITBhub holds 1,287 bags across the professional tours and the creator scene, and Big John’s is the only one with a Reaper in it. Among the 41 Internet Invitational bags we have on file, the putter count is led by Odyssey, TaylorMade and L.A.B. Golf, the same three brands that dominate on tour, with L.A.B.’s DF3 the single most common model. The Scythe is a true one-off in this field, which is probably why it drew a question on camera before it drew a highlight.

He has been rolling the Reaper on camera since at least January 2025, when clips captioned “fear the reaper” started appearing on his channel, and since late 2025 his video descriptions have carried a discount code for the company. There is no evidence Reaper pays him or that the putter was given to him; his own account is that he bought into a gimmick and it worked. A site that scores creators’ filmed rounds has rated him a plus-3 handicap this year, so the hands behind the putter are better than the shirtless persona suggests.

The Rest of Big John’s Bag

The putter is the outlier in an otherwise conventional setup. In a bag walkthrough he filmed in March 2026, before the event, Big John showed a TaylorMade Qi10 LS driver, a TaylorMade Stealth 3-wood, Titleist T100S irons from 5-iron to 9-iron, three Vokey wedges at 46, 50 and 54 degrees and a Vokey SM9 at 62. “I got like 20 clubs total in the bag,” he says in that clip, which also includes a Callaway 3-iron, a Ping 4-iron, a spare 6-iron, two 9-irons and a second putter, a Bettinardi. So the exact 14 he took to Big Cedar Lodge is not something the footage settles. What is settled, in the most public way possible, is which putter made the cut.

Should You Buy One?

Treat the putt as what it is: one stroke, under pressure, by a player who had already said he was holing more with this club than with anything before it. That is a testimonial, not a test. What the Scythe offers on paper is unusual at its price: a milled, made-to-order blade in a soft metal, with head weight and length fitted at purchase and a return window to fall back on. What it lacks is any track record beyond one bag in our database and any published loft and lie. If you like a traditional blade, want something nobody at your club has, and are not fussy about specifications you cannot see, it is a reasonable $280. If you putt best with a mallet or a zero-torque design, nothing that happened on the 18th at Ozarks National changes that.

Big John’s full bag, as we have it, is on his player page. Every team, match and result from the event is on the Internet Invitational hub, which updates after each episode.