When Brian Harman won last week’s Valero Texas Open using a TaylorMade Spider 5K-ZT Prototype putter, eyebrows went up around the golf world.
It was the first win for TaylorMade’s first zero torque putter, which has yet to hit retail shops and adds more fuel to the hottest craze in professional golf, next to mini drivers.
On this week’s episode of GOLF’s Fully Equipped, co-hosts Johnny Wunder and Wadeh Maroun both discussed their thoughts on zero torque putters and how they can work for a lot of people but maybe not everyone.
“I think they are very, very awesome band-aid to have,” said Wunder. “If you are really struggling, it’s a nice reset to get you back to get the path together. If you’re way out of line, I think for the right player, they’re unbelievable.”
Wunder said he used a SeeMore center shafted putter once and shot 67 one day and 79 the next day without being able to “hit the hole from two feet.”
His friend Charles Howell III was using the PXG Allan zero torque putter and had trouble figuring out why he felt he was hitting good putts but couldn’t make anything.
“Well, because you’re a releaser of the putter head, meaning you release it so that when you have something that’s resisting torque as much as these things do, for a better player, if you have any kind of sensitivity in your hands or your fingers, unless you’re going to resign to the fact that you’re just barely going to touch the putter, you’re going to barely hold on to it and just let the putter swing you essentially, you’re going to fight the overcorrection,” Wunder told Howell. “What you experienced is the same thing I experienced.”
Because players like Wunder and Howell like to release the putter head and let the toe turnover, they have a tendency to miss left.
L.A.B. Golf founder Sam Hahn is likely aware of these tendencies, and Wadeh Maroun found that out when he visited L.A.B.’s facility in Oregon.
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“One of the things that he said was, if you accelerate through the ball, it’s very hard to utilize his technology,” Maroun said. “That’s why he always gives you those drills to get to that motion of letting gravity take its handle and do what it needs to do. Personally for me, I think — and I’ve said this before and I agree with you. I’ve said it before on the show. It’s going to be for some people, it’s not going to be for everybody.”
Maroun suggests that players who release the putter head try a zero torque putter in a broomstick or counter-balance configuration since it’s a completely different stroke.
