We talk all the time about club fitting, but how much does putter fitting enter the conversation? Steve Dresser of the Steve Dresser Golf Academy shows us why putter fitting is important, along with some of the basic principles that guide the process for each golfer.
Steve Dresser:
We do a lot of club fitting here at our Golf Academy, and this is a club that a lot of people don’t pay a whole lot of attention to for fitting. You’re going to use this sometimes half the time when you’re out there on the golf course – I hope not quite that much, but it is possible.
There are a lot of design features in a putter that can help you putt better. Obviously, you’ve got the length of the club, the lie angle this way. What kind of materials in the face? How many alignment lines? The offset on the putter, which is this little gooseneck right in here.
And another thing a lot of people don’t know about is the balance of the face. And this particular putter is called a face-balanced putter. When I rest it on my finger, the face stays square like that. And for putter fitting, that’s usually for someone who has a pretty straight back and straight through stroke. They do vary. I’ve got three putters here from PING that are specifically made for fitting.
So we have the face-balanced putter. This one is considered moderate toe hang. So if someone has a moderate arc to their stroke, we’ll let them try this putter and see if it helps. And then someone with an even bigger arching stroke, if you remember Ben Crenshaw, he had that long, flowing stroke that kind of went around in a circle almost, and he had what’s called a heel-shafted putter. And that toe, the putter didn’t quite look like this one, but it did hang like this one. This is called a full toe hang.
So there’s a lot more to it than you might think. Don’t forget, your putter, no matter how long you’ve been playing and how good you are at this game, it’s still going to account for about 40 percent or even more of your score. So show this club the love it deserves.