This is a topic that’s sure to get you thinking long and hard about your putter, especially if your relationship with the flatstick is currently strained.
One of the discussions in this episode of Kick Point (watch below) focuses on how golfers tend to go about finding their perfect putter.
Don’t worry, this particular chat isn’t too technical - Joe and Dan merely pose the question as to whether golfers might be better off choosing a model they love the look of first and then getting fitted.
Fast-forward to 57.29 below for the reasoning behind this, with more fascinating insight and theory from Joe, who’s not just the co-host of Kick Point: The Golf Gear Show, but also a PGA professional with vast club fitting experience.
WATCH: Joe from Kick Point: The Golf Gear Show says there "needs to be a spark" between a golfer and their putter (from 57.29)
“Maybe you have to work backwards,” explains Joe. “Maybe you have to start fancying [the putter] and then get them fitted.
“Find that head that you love, then go to a putter fitter and say, ‘Can you spec it out?’”
Joe believes this could and probably should be the way things work in putter fittings, and he compares it to finding a partner/marriage (stay with us here).
Actually, “more like a DBS check,” says Joe.
“I fancy her [the putter], she’s really funny, she’s really nice. Can this work?
“And then it [the fitter] comes back, ‘No, we’ve got an extensive criminal record. We just cannot make this marriage work.”
To clarify, that’s the fitter saying the player and the chosen putter are just not a suitable match, maybe because of the torque profile, for example.
It’s just a theory, but one that Joe thinks a lot of golfers could benefit from - that’s to find a putter head that they love the look of first, one that they could see themselves working with for a long time, through thick and thin, and then getting it spec’d up.
Interestingly, Joe doesn’t believe this approach would work with the long game (drivers, fairways and hybrids).
“I think you can always make something in the long game work even if you don’t fancy it,” he says.
“So long as your shaft’s right, the static measurements, your loft, your lie, your swing weights, I think you can really get used to something in the long game that you don’t love the look of.”
By the way, Joe isn’t a big fan of how the Ping G430 Max 10k driver looks, but it does a mightily impressive job (we've seen it).
“There’s artistry on the greens, and those bits and bobs that are unquantifiable,” says Joe.
“I think you have to have that spark and that bit of a relationship with it.”
Some final words of advice: go somewhere where you can try some alternative methods, other than your stock 34-inch stock putters, as you can end up getting shoehorned into a technique by those models that are generally available on the racks.
Go somewhere where you can try armlock. Go somewhere where you can try counterbalance. Go somewhere you can try a broomstick, because you might find a more suitable model.
And that could lead to a lifetime of happiness on the greens.
“Name me a great putter that’s always switching putters?” says Joe. “You can’t.”
Think Tiger, think Crenshaw, Stricker and Brandt Snedeker, some of the best putters the game has ever seen, who, for the most part, didn’t chop and change models.
Is Joe wrong? Feel free to let him know by leaving a comment in the box below.
