As I’ve chronicled my own golf journey through gear, I’ve started to realize that I’ve fallen into some of the bad habits that we here at GOLF preach against.
Take my putting.
Not until I was fit for a putter at Bettinardi’s Studio B did I become aware of the putting stroke and putter I should be using.
Today, I’m in a putter type I could never have imagined using, but I felt and saw instant results with how easy it was to get the ball rolling end-over-end on my intended line.
For those who have been hesitant to get fit for a putter, this article is for you.
Some background on my putters
All my life, I have used a Ping Anser-style blade putter, which was the putter type that came in my first U.S. Kids’ Golf set. The first Scotty Cameron my dad cut down for me was a 2005 Studio Style Newport 2.5 with a GSS insert.
That putter has a flow neck and a ton of toe hang, which I always thought matched my stroke because I always thought about the putting stroke as an arc and opening the face going back was the easiest way to return it to square.
In 2010, the first golf club I ever bought myself was a 1999 Scotty Cameron Teryllium II Newport 2 for a $150 on eBay, and I had it refinished. This putter has a plumber’s neck, but I was going for feel and I didn’t know anything about putter fittings at the time.
I kept using that putter for 13 years before a newer Teryllium version came out, this time as a wide-body blade and a high-toe flow short slant neck. I still thought my stroke matched best with a lot of toe flow so I bagged one and never thought twice about it.
I did get fit for this putter but after I already had purchased it. I got fit to the putter, rather than finding a putter that was fit for me.
But, as these things tend to go, I was wrong!
My Bettinardi putter fitting
I was excited to go to Bettinardi’s Studio B in Oak Brook, Ill., just outside of Chicago; it would be my first putter fitting at which we’d start from scratch, and I was going in with a completely open mind.
From the moment we started rolling putts, I realized something was about to change.
“Does this green have a bit of a left break?” I asked, innocently, thinking I was hitting good putts.
“It actually has more of a right break, if anything,” said Tom Sopic, Studio B’s lead hive concierge and my fitter for the day.
Using a high-tech camera system in the fitting bay and Quintic putting analysis, Sopic uncovered a huge revelation about my putting stroke.
He didn’t even need to see the video to confirm it.
“Just watching you hit a couple of putts during your warm-up, I could see that it was more of a pendulum-style stroke,” he said. “The easiest way we saw it was that your takeaway when we came to the apex of your stroke, the pocket of your putter was dead straight behind the golf ball.”
On the video screen, Tom showed me that my putter face stays almost square for most of the stroke, as opposed to opening on the way back and closing on the way through as it would for an arc. Because the face naturally wants to close on the way through, it created a hitch in my putting stroke that would mostly cause me to strike the ball on the heel and pull it.
We could also see that my eyes were about 2 to 2.5 golf-ball widths inside the heel of the putter, which was because my putter was long (36″).
“A lot of times when people are fitting into toe hang putters, they recommend your eyes fall inside the heel, which we do as well,” Sopic said. “But that distance away from it, with you being a pendulum-style putter, is going to create a lot of exaggerated arc that isn’t there naturally.”
All of this was causing my golf ball to launch with almost as much side spin as forward roll. The Quintic analysis showed my forward spin at a 51 RPM average and the side spin at 45 RPM. Ideally, Sopic said, you want three times as much forward spin as side spin. It wasn’t consistent, either, because my highest side spin was up to 75 RPM of hook spin!
The result of my putter fitting
We stayed in a blade-style putter because, while I believe a mallet putter is more forgiving, I’ve never found one I like looking at. I’ve gone to wider-blades to give me more forgiveness and that seems to do the trick.
Our winning putter was three degrees flatter (67˚) than my gamer (as the toe of my putter was still coming in high), and a half inch shorter (35.5″), which brought my eyes right over the heel of the putter. To me, it really didn’t feel that much different, which was what Sopic was going for. My spine angle didn’t change when addressing the shorter putter.
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The real shock to me was the head and neck, which was a Bettinardi BB-28 Slot Back, a nearly face-balanced putter with a single-bend shaft. I had never used any putter without a hosel before.
Interestingly, the BB-28 has an identical offset (3/4ths of a shaft) to my previous gamer, which, despite the absence of a hosel, looked completely different; however, lining up to a putt felt almost the same. That’s no coincidence, Sopic said, because right-eye dominant players, like myself, who like to use sight lines on the flange to line up their putts, tend to also prefer less offset.
But the results on the Quintic were clear. With six putts, my forward rolls averaged 60 RPMs of forward spin and just 12 RPMs of sidespin, well above the 3-to-1 minimum ratio.
The cool part of the Studio B experience was that a new putter was built to my exact specs right there for me, and I was able to go out and play with it immediately that afternoon.
I won’t lie and say there wasn’t an adjustment period, especially considering I’ve been scared of pulling short putts for the better part of six months now, but by my third round with this putter (and even the back nine that day) it was clear that this putter fit me better than any other I’d had before.
What this putter fitting really tells us
We could go on and on about how this has really changed how I think about my putting, or how it’s going to improve my game, but the reality is simple:
You need to be fit for your putter, not to your putter! There’s a difference.
It also comes down to more than just specs. Different putter shapes, faces, necks, etc., all do different things. I could bend and cut my old putter to meet the same specs as this new one, and it still wouldn’t work as well because of the toe flow.
So my suggestion: Go get fit and then buy a putter; your scores will thank you later. It will cost you only about $100 to $150 ($100 at Bettinardi’s Studio B), which really isn’t that much when you’re already spending $400-$500 on a new putter. Think of it as an investment for all the money it will end up winning you on the greens!
Want to find the best putter for your game? Find a club-fitting location near you at True Spec Golf.
