About this item
- HIGH MOI DESIGN – For added forgiveness
- PLUMBER’S NECK HOSEL – Offset hosel to ensure hands ahead of the putter
- SOFT TPU FACE INSERT – For added feel at impact
- CONTRASTING BI-COLOR SIGHTLINE – For improved alignment
- FREE HEADCOVER – Included with putter
Mary (verified owner) –
Great putter especially for the price. Feel like I have great touch with it especially after I replaced the grip with something thicker. Love the ball scooper.
Kayden (verified owner) –
Why spend 10 times as much for a putter? This rolls true and that’s all you need.
Dylan (verified owner) –
Weight and balance of this putter is great. It could just be me but i noticed a slight improvement with my puts going from my old putter to this 1
Mateo (verified owner) –
I’ll never understand why anybody would pay $400.00 for a putter, but like P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
I love the style of this one, and it goes without saying that I love the price, too.
The only quibble I have about it is that it’s a little heavy. But maybe that’s OK, especially in a putter.
I wouldn’t want any of my other clubs to be this heavy, though.
But I particularly like that you can easily pick the ball up off of the green with a backswipe of the club, and have no fear of the ball falling out and having to chase it all over the green, trying to pick it up.
That doesn’t look especially cool.
In fact, it nestles so securely into the back of the club, that you could walk around with the ball there – or even two balls, side-by-side, if you wanted to.
I don’t know why you’d want to do that, but you could if you wanted to.
But I do like the heft of the club, and the fact that you can zero in on the hole and nail it from just about any distance away.
I may have learned something that I didn’t realize, after many years of playing this game, and not having any real clear awareness of a very important factor:
I’ve always played the break on every putt I’ve ever taken, because I didn’t know there was any alternative.
I mean, you see a break, and you have to counter it.
But what if you could just hit the ball straight for the hole, ignoring any break you may see?
The fact is that it’s actually true: You don’t have to play the break, but it takes guts, and probably a lot of experience, to ever get comfortable enough to just plunge ahead and shoot straight for the hole, in spite of the break.
What I’ve finally found out, is that if you hit your putt firmly, and, most especially, follow through, you will create momentum, which will carry the ball straight to the hole, and trump the break.
There is one caveat, however, or one fly in the ointment: You always want to hit the ball with the idea of going no more than six inches past the hole, in case you miss.
There are other ways, besides reading the break wrong, to miss a putt: You could simply have aimed wrong!
The temptation to hit the ball hard, so as to guarantee enough momentum, means that if you miss, you may go well past six inches.
The solution is, of course, don’t miss!
Now: If you do hit the ball hard, and it goes into the hole, there was no harm done. If, however, you play even a little bit of break – because there is definitely a break in the green – but hit it hard, you will miss, because it didn’t break!
The ball only breaks because it runs out of momentum. If it is still rolling forward, with momentum, it will roll straight.
But, seriously – that’s all the more reason to concentrate on your follow-through. This will build-in momentum on the stroke, simply by following through with your hands, toward the hole, even after you have made contact with the ball. It’s the continued forward motion, within the same stroke that you just hit the ball with, that creates momentum.
When you “fire and fall back,” or hit the ball and pull back, you telegraph your intentions subconsciously, and you have not followed through. When you do follow through, you set in motion a force of forward movement that continues in the rolling of the ball, even though we can’t see it.
I’ve always tried to judge how hard to hit the ball so that I could play the break, and die right into the hole.
But what you’re doing is fighting Mother Nature, and that involves a lot of guessing, and tentative strokes, and a lot of pulling back just as you hit the ball, so that you get just the right speed.
Plus, you more or less have to “lob” the ball in there, or hit it to the high side, so that it breaks toward the hole, to counteract the break it would otherwise take, which would cause the ball to miss below the hole.
That’s pretty tricky business, and you end up with a lot of putts that are, “close, but no cigar!”
In fact, what is happening is that we’re making the job of putting much more difficult than it needs to be.
If the ball does break, but just not quite as much as you thought it should, because you played it too high, or hit it too hard, what does that tell you?
Maybe that you’re better off to just shoot straight at the hole.
But I’ve made a lot of those tough putts, too, and had gotten pretty good at playing the break.
And I never thought much about it, actually, because it is what it is. I mean, the green breaks, or it doesn’t, and you’ve got to try to get your ball in the hole, in the fewest number of strokes.
However, that is actually trying to second-guess nature, or ignoring the fact that momentum will work to your advantage, and eliminate much of the guesswork, and a lot of the teeth-gnashing along the way.
But I didn’t know that. I’ve spent my entire life, playing golf through all of my adult life, without the knowledge that forward momentum will prevail over a break to the downside, and keep the ball going straight.
A classic case of, “Too soon old, and too late smart.”
But realistically, how many people will ever know that? Or believe it? When you look, with your own eyes, and see that the green breaks, we all know that you have to play the break so that the ball will break into the hole.
We might never realize that we could have hit the ball straight to the hole, and sank the putt.
I’ve never really worried too much about my putting style – it just came pretty natural to me – but I can easily see that it would be even more terrific to just be able to hit straight toward the hole, and expect it to go in.
Since I got the new putter, I also got a pair of those little flat holes to lay on the ground, (of which there are many styles) and decided to practice in the living room, until the warm weather returns.
Of course, your living-room floor is perfectly flat, with absolutely no break, so you don’t get much of a read off of it.
But when you get out on the course, and playing some of the holes where there is a lot of break, this is where it will take some practice, and having to find out just how much break the momentum will overcome.
I did know that on a short putt, you could take the break out of the putt by just aiming straight for the hole, but I couldn’t see how the break could keep from affecting a long putt.
I didn’t really understand all there is to know about momentum, but I figured out that hitting the ball hard is not what produces momentum.
What does produce momentum is following through, or continuing with your putting stroke toward the hole, even after you have hit the ball.
I find that if I extend my forearms toward the hole, and point the clubhead at the hole, after I have made contact with the ball, with one smooth, continuous stroke, I can put momentum on the ball, and see it go straight to the hole, and go in.
But one more thing: Putting is the only time we are expected to hit the ball, but definitely do not want to hit the ground, unlike every other time we swing the club.
(Except, of course, when you are hitting off of a tee.)
You feel like such a klutz when you scrape the ground as you’re trying to hit a putt, and it completely stuns you, because it’s so unexpected, and makes you look like a total incompetent.
“Humiliating,” is the best description I can think of.
And so, I have come up with a solution: Lift up, as you stroke the ball, and hit the top half of the ball. And I have found that it helps if you set up with the ball slightly forward, so you’re hitting it on the upswing.
If you get in the habit of always thinking about lifting up as you start forward with your putting stroke, you will eliminate the problem of ever scuffing the green, and blowing your putt.
That is, after all, a stroke, no matter that it’s an “oops” moment, and you didn’t mean to do it.
This will put topspin on the ball, which makes it track straight, and go directly toward the hole
(Do not pass go, and do not collect $200.00).
The other tip I want to pass along is that since we can’t sight down a rifle barrel, such as when we are shooting at a target with a rifle, the next best way to line up our putt is to simply practice our swing, as we are setting up to take the putt, and pay attention to where the clubhead is pointed during the swing.
Regardless of how we are set up, or which way our feet are pointing, just swing the club back and forth until you see that the swing is lined up toward the hole.
Keep your swing the same, but adjust your stance, so that you bring your swing around to where you are aimed straight at the hole.
Now, when you look down at your feet, this is the setup you can use on every putt, to always be sure that you’re swinging toward the hole.
This comes in especially handy on some of those particularly tricky greens, where there are multiple breaks between you and the hole, and every course has at least a few holes which virtually defy trying to figure them out.
The good news is that you don’t have to figure them out!
There is a simple solution: Just forget about the break, and count on good old momentum to save the day.
Don’t adjust your swing – adjust your foot position, until you are just naturally swinging toward the hole.
Now, with forward momentum, you can ignore the break, and shoot straight for the hole, and expect it to go in.
That would certainly simplify everything, and take a lot of the drama out of the game.
Always remember: The shortest distance between two points is a straight line.
That’s not always relevant, but it’s important to keep in mind.
I realize that this is all completely counter-intuitive, but just stop and think: Momentum is forward force, of the ball rolling in a forward direction, which overrides the force of gravity, which would pull it to one side or the other, whichever is the low side.
That’s a key bit information to know, and it’s not wishful thinking: It’s Science, or Physics, and a fact, which makes all the difference in putting the ball on the golf course!
When the ball breaks, that is because of the absence of momentum. When it starts to break, it’s because it has run out of momentum. You are conceding the pull of gravity to the downward side of the slope, simply by not hitting the ball with enough forward force to give it momentum.
You’ll notice that when you play the break, you always have to gauge precisely how hard to hit the ball, so that as it dies, it dies into the hole.
Which means that the ball has run out of momentum, and gravity can finally take over, and pull it toward the downside of the slope. But with enough momentum, it will continue to roll straight.
The ball wants to roll forward, which is exactly what you want it to do. And it will, if you provide it with enough forward inertia to make it happen.
A perfectly round ball, such as a golf ball, has nothing to prevent it from rolling indefinitely, and in the same direction.
The laws of physics state that anything moving wants to “keep doing what it is doing,” meaning that it wants to continue going in the direction it is going.
That, of course, is good news for golfers.
Momentum is not something I made up: It is a fact of science, or physics, of the fact that an object moving forward tends to continue to move forward, rather than succumb to the force of gravity, if it is under the force of momentum.
When we play the break, we are giving it just enough force to barely move forward, because we are conceding, before the fact, the pull of gravity off to the low side. We are hitting the ball just hard enough to get to the hole, and die in the hole, because of the pull to the low side by the force of gravity.
Without any forward momentum, gravity will win every time. But the force of momentum – which we initiate – will prevail over the sidewise pull of gravity, assuming we provide the momentum in the first place.
All the more reason to hit the ball above the center-line of the ball, and lift up as you swing, to start it rolling with forward momentum.
As I watch the pros on the Golf Channel, I am continually amazed to observe that almost nobody follows through on their putts. And this, of course, is why they very often miss putts of three or four feet, and sometimes of even one or two feet! They are needlessly playing the ball to break, when all they need to do is hit it toward the center of the hole, and follow through.
Of course, they can still miss, but that would be because their aim was off in the first place. If your aim is lined up toward the side of the hole, rather than to the middle, guess what? The ball will go right where you aim it.
In other words, after all these years, it’s still subconsciously normal to play the side of the cup, to allow for the break. But if you play the break, but hit it too hard to allow gravity to pull it down, momentum will keep it going straight, and you will miss.
But if you really want to see the difference momentum can make, I’ll give away my last tip:
Pivot, on your putts, just like you’re supposed to do on your normal golf swing.
Keep your left foot planted, but pivot around facing the hole with your swing, and raise your right heel slightly.
Let your pivot actually be your swing, or turn your body at the same time you swing toward the hole.
Watch the difference in how the ball rolls, and tracks to the hole.
Don’t forget to hit the top half of the ball!
Just think of a train, on a track, which is going straight to the hole.
I can’t wait for spring, to get out and use my new putter, but also to tackle some of the small, outlying courses we play during the year. Many of them have such interesting and challenging greens, which are sometimes crowned, or where if you don’t sink the putt, it runs to the edge of the green, and completely off the green, back out onto the course.
It’s an evil mind that designs a course this way, but there are many of them around, and they completely flummox your brain.
But I’m ready for them this year.