Is There Something to the Increase in Long Putter Use?

Interesting isn’t it how all of a sudden the number of tour pros making a move to a Belly putter has increased so dramatically.  I mean, it’s not like longer putters are new – the “Adam Scott” style pendulum style long putters have been around for more than 20 yrs, the Belly style putters a little less.

No, this is just one more example of a trait possessed by MANY tour pros that I quickly learned back in the days when I would spend time on the tour servicing the players for whom I had designed clubs.  The pros are no different than any of us.  Despite how much their swing skills and competitive brains have put them where they are, they’re all looking for that magic club that can turn them overnight into a winner.

Despite the fact we golfers so often get fixated on how well these guys hit the ball, veteran golfers all know success on tour is directly proportional to how well they putt.  Getting around in 26 putts or posting a 1.5 putts per GIR will cash nice checks all year long.

What gets me as a clubfitting technologist about the recent rise in Belly putter use on tour is how it has awakened the traditionalists in the game to chime in with their latest verse to demand the USGA act to outlaw long putters.  These are the equipment vigilantes who claim when a putter is “anchored to the body”  it gives the long putter user an unfair advantage over golfers who putt with a conventional short stick.

As a club performance scientist, this falls into the category of people who can ignore pure common sense and logic to pursue an attitude of “don’t confuse me with the facts because my mind’s already made up.”

Fact:  It took 20 yrs before a long putter was used to win a major on tour. That’s somewhere around 1 in the last 80 majors.

Fact: The number of tour wins with a long putter still can be counted with the fingers on both hands. That’s somewhere substantially less than a 5% success rate.

Fact:  One can still pull or push putts with a long putter.  If anchoring to the body was such an advantage, wouldn’t such errant strokes be eliminated?

A point the long putter haters like to make is that a golfer who turns to a long putter is gaining an advantage because they can’t putt as well with a conventional putter so the long putter unfairly corrects that “swing error” with technology.

GEE. . . with that logic, things like going to a shorter driver to control the ball better, using a different face angle to reduce a misdirection tendency, using a different loft to counteract a different angle of attack or ANY CLUBFITTING CHANGE should be outlawed.  At the end of the day, changing to a long putter is nothing more than an attempt to utilize a different fitting option to gain shot improvement.

But not to fret, as is often the case with tour players in their search for that perfect golf club, some will stay with it and many will go back to a conventional putter when the long term results show themselves.  And we’ll all put this sudden increase in belly putter attention to bed and go on to the next club change trend.

Until nest time, best wishes in this great game,

-Tom

Clubhead Cup Face and How it Affects Performance

All driver heads as well as some fairway wood and hybrid heads are manufactured from a number of separate pieces which are welded together to complete the final construction of the clubhead.  Most common are driver heads which are manufactured from 4 separate pieces, as shown by this illustration below.

Of the separate pieces which make up the complete clubhead, one is always the clubface. Within such types of driver, fairway wood and hybrid head construction, the face can be formed to be welded to the body in two different ways, one called an EDGE WELDED face and the other referred to as a CUP FACE CONSTRUCTION.

The above illustration shows the more common of the two, an edge welded face. In the edge welded face clubhead, the face is made so that as the term states, the welding line to secure the face piece to the head body is on the very edge of the face. To contrast, the cup face is formed in a manner so the face piece is more like a cup, meaning it could hold water because the edges are angled around the face surface. In a cup face construction, the welding line to secure the cup face to the head body is not on the edge of the face, but is rather some distance back from the edge of the face. Below is an illustration of a cup face construction to contrast against the above edge welded face design.

The purpose of a cup face construction is to improve the amount of face flexing for areas off the center of the face to achieve better distance, performance and feel from off center hits. In modern clubface performance, the more the face flexes inward, the higher the speed of the ball will be coming off the face.

With an edge welded face, a portion of the actual welding bead that secures the face to the body is extends past the actual seam onto the rear surface of the face. This welding bead can extend ¼” onto the back of the face, all 360* around the face. It can act as an additional “stiffener” or “brace” to prevent the face from flexing as much inward for shots hit off the center of the face.

Since the welding line on a cup face construction is well back from any portion of the face, this means the welding bead is nowhere near any portion of the face. In addition, the inside edge of the face is more curved so there is no additional agent causing resistance to the face flexing inward. Below is a photo showing an actual cup face 4-piece driver head on which the pieces of the head and the cup face have just been initially tack welded to position the pieces for full robotic welding.

There is no question maximum ball speed comes only from impact in the center or slightly above the center of the face. But with a cup face construction, and with a variable thickness cup face construction, in contrast with a uniform thickness edge welded face, the off center hit performance can be improved remarkably.

-Tom

How To Find The Best Custom Clubfitters

With the advent of adjustable hosel drivers and special order fitting options from the big golf club companies, a growing number of golfers are becoming aware that custom clubfitting exists with claims that it is a way for them to improve their play.  The problem with this type of awareness among golfers about custom fitting is that it becomes too easy for uneducated golfers to be fooled into going to be custom fit by people and businesses that cannot perform the type of custom fitting that can deliver visible game improvement.

Using an adjustable hosel driver or simply ordering custom specs from a big golf company are in no way the same type of fitting referred to as FULL SPECIFICATIONS PROFESSIONAL CUSTOM FITTING.  Full specifications custom clubfitting means fitting and custom building each one of the woods, irons and wedges for all 13 of the KEY fitting specifications.  Not 1 or 2 clubs with 2 or 3 of the key fitting specs altered within a very limited range.  Nothing less than full specs fitting will allow a golfer the greatest opportunity to experience measurable game improvement.

How do you find professional custom clubfitter who can fit for all 13 of the key fitting specifications for each club in the bag?  Your odds are very slim in a big retail golf chain store.  It’s not likely to be found in a golf course pro shop either.  And that’s sad to say because of the large number of golfers who frequent big retail golf stores and pro shops.

You’ll find the best custom clubfitters typically working solo in their own small, independent golf shop.  And yes for sure, because professional custom clubfitting is a “cottage industry”, you can also find a very good custom clubfitter working from the basement or garage of their home.  In fact, there have been past winners of the industry’s Clubfitter of the Year award who operate their fitting business from a shop in their home.

If you want to be fit the RIGHT way by a person with real knowledge and skill in professional Clubfitting, there are three places you can go to find out if there is a good, experienced clubfitter in your area.

• www.agcpgolf.com/locator/

This is the Clubmaker locator of the Association of Golf Clubfitting Professionals. The AGCP is one of the two trade organizations of professional custom clubmaker/clubfitters. The AGCP consists of the best of the best of the independent custom clubmakers in the world. In short, if you are fit by an AGCP Clubmaker, you most definitely will have been fit by a very good, very knowledgeable person.

• http://www.clubmakersguild.com/index.php/member-directory

This is the member directory for the International Clubmakers’ Guild, the second of the two trade organizations of professional custom clubmaker/clubfitters. Many of the ICG clubmakers came from the former Professional Clubmakers’ Society and also represent people with a lot of experience in full specifications custom Clubfitting. In addition, the ICG offers accreditation certification so when you find an accredited ICG member, you have found a very good person you can trust to fit you properly.

• http://wishongolf.com/find-a-clubfitter/

This is the link to my company’s Clubmaker Locator. These are clubmakers that we have screened, that we know, and in many cases that I have personally trained in the past to offer golfers a full specifications, professional fitting experience.

Between all three links, most golfers should be able to find a competent clubfitter within a reasonable distance to where they live.  Of course, there will be areas of the country not served by a full specifications custom clubfitter.  But I can tell you if you are interested in having your clubs fit so that you have the most chance of game improvement and the best chance to play to the very best of your given ability, that’s going to happen from a Clubmaker you’ll find through one of these three sources and not through a big retail golf store or pro shop.

-Tom

How Does A Variable Thickness Face Affect Off Center Hits?

In the world of club face design, there is what are called “uniform thickness faces” and there are “variable thickness faces.” A face designed to be uniform in thickness is just that – the face is manufactured so the entire face has the same dimensional thickness.

To contrast, a variable thickness face is manufactured so a specific area of the center of the face is slightly thicker than the surrounding area around the center of the face. Below is an illustration of a typical variable thickness face design from one of my driver head designs.

In this case, you can see that the oval shaped center area is made to be a little thicker than the perimeter surrounding area. The purpose of a variable thickness face is to achieve more face flexing when the ball is hit off center while still having the proper amount of face flexing in the center of the face to keep the face within the USGA’s maximum limit for COR (coefficient of restitution) in the Rules of Golf.

The concept is to make the surrounding area thin enough so that when the ball is hit off center, the thinner perimeter area will offer less resistance to the face flexing, which in turn will increase the ball speed for the off center hit. The thicker center area is necessary to prevent a center impact from flexing too much to either exceed the USGA’s limit for the COR of the face or cause potential permanent deformation of the face.

How large the thicker to thinner areas, the shape of the thick to thin areas, and exactly how thick and thin they need to be are all areas that have to be researched for each different size or different shaped face area. TWGT is the first to have commercially developed a variable thickness face in the golf industry for a titanium driver in 1995. All TWGT driver models developed since the company was founded in 2003 have had a variable thickness face to improve off center hit distance, performance and feel.

The variable thickness face concept also can be engineered to improve off center face impacts in a set of irons.  First pioneered for an iron design by TWGT in 2004 with our 770CFE irons and continued with our current 870Ti irons, the variable thickness iron face concept takes more work to determine the precise specifications because iron faces change in size through the set.  In addition, iron faces are not symmetrically shaped as are wood and driver faces so this too requires a difference in the design of the thick to thin areas of the faces.  Below is an illustration to show how each of the faces in the original 770CFE set of irons required the position of the thick to thin areas to change from the #3 iron to the pitching wedge in the design.

-Tom