Which category of golf clubs do you think offers the most opportunity for fitting and customization? While answers will undoubtedly vary, there’s a strong case to be made for putters. After all, there really isn’t another club category that enjoys such wide acceptance of different shapes, sizes, and lengths. You certainly don’t see as much visual diversity with any other type of club, and this doesn’t begin to consider things like lie angle or toe hang. Still, it might surprise you to hear that there are people who believe the scope of standard putter fitting options is much narrower than it appears to be on the surface. In fact, one such person quit his job and built his own company because of that belief. Formerly a daytime lawyer and a nighttime tinkerer, his name is Blake Callaway, and his company, Astral Putters, is one you deserve to know more about.
Before we begin, we want to encourage you to read this with an open mind. It’s incredibly cool and you might just find the missing piece to your personal putting puzzle. Astral is doing things nobody else is doing in the industry. Golfers are notoriously resistant to change, and to make matters worse, they can be a little lazy when it comes to digesting new information or learning new methods. Either way, if you’re here we suspect you might be a little ahead of the curve already and we think you’ll find Astral’s story compelling.
What is an Astral Putter?
The basic premise behind Astral Putters is building advanced adjustability into putters so that everyone can truly maximize their potential on the green. It’s that simple. The method for getting there may be a little more complex than rolling three putters at a big box store and picking your favorite, and we’ll dive into that, but the company’s overall goal is to widen the net so to speak. They believe that golfers have far more variation in their putting stroke than the typical slight arc, large arc, and straight back categories they are often lumped in to.
A hobbyist at heart, Callaway spent years restoring classic putters and diving into the specifics of what a perfectly fit putter looked like to him. He came to believe that lie angle, toe hang, and shaft offset were the most critical aspects of putter fitting, yet to his surprise he couldn’t find a production putter that truly matched what he believed fit him best. He was looking for a blade putter with no offset and moderate toe hang, but aside from a few highly collectible vintage options, this combination was impossible to find. With an entrepreneurial spirit, he set out to find a way to build a putter that could fit everybody from the “standards” to the “in-betweens”.
Adjustability – Astral Putters
Callaway knew the centerpiece of putter adjustability would lie in the hosel, as even small changes to the design or location of the hosel can produce wildly different results, even with the same head. Eventually that knowledge led him to the idea of a rotating, Z-shaped adjustable hosel that could produce small, incremental changes in how much offset (or onset) is visible.
The other benefit of this concept is that these settings can be adjusted at any time, thus accommodating changes in taste or putting technique for years to come. To widen the breadth of the adjustable hosel’s effectiveness, he built three different sizes and made each one reversible. The difference in hosel size, or length to be more accurate, creates a “preset” of sorts. The shortest is more conducive to producing toe hang, the longest produces more face balanced options, and the medium length version is the most versatile.
We mentioned that the Z hosels are reversible. This is a spot where things start to get a bit too complicated to describe well in words, so we’ll do so with both a description and a visual in the hopes it’s easier to digest.
The painted end of the reversible hosel contains a series of notches, ten to be exact, that resembles a gear. When a notch is chosen it sets the hosel in a specific position. For example, position A1 orients the hosel directly over the head of the putter, giving you a no-offset option. A2 slightly rotates the hosel in front of the face, and this pattern continues in a big circle into you are back at position A1. By flipping the hosel upside down, you access another 10 unpainted notches, each of which is oriented between the incremental “A” settings. So, B1 sits perfectly between A1 and A2. B2 sits between A2 and A3. This provides a total of twenty different settings for each of the three hosels.
Options – Astral Putters
We know. It’s quite a bit to take in all at once, but hopefully you are beginning to see how many fitting options are materializing with just a few well-designed components. That’s just the beginning though. The options begin to increase exponentially when we consider that there are five different lie angle adapters available, ranging from 66 to 74 degrees. According to Astral, taking length and handedness out of the equation, they can accommodate 27,000 different combinations when bringing all the following options to bear.
- 3 putter body types: Blade, Mid-Mallet, Mallet
- 3 face inserts: Copper, Brass, Steel
- 5 lie adapters: 66, 68, 70, 72, and 74 degrees
- 60 hosel position settings: 3 hosels with 20 different positions each
- 2 shaft options
- 5 grip options
If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice a couple interesting nuggets in the list above. First, there are three body options: the blade (standard Anser style head), the mid-mallet (a doublewide blade) and mallet (a fang variation). Also, and we think this is extremely cool, there are three stock face inserts to choose from. Each is a half inch thick and provides a different sensation at impact, ranging from Brass and its classic “ping” sound to a softer Copper that appeals to more modern tastes. The company also releases special edition inserts occasionally for those players that enjoy changing things up from time to time.
Fitting – Astral Putters
Now that we have discussed the myriad of fitting options available, it’s a good time to address the elephant in the room. Is it reasonable to expect average golfers to self-fit themselves? The answer isn’t really black and white. Obviously, there is a great deal of complexity involved with not only adjusting Astral putters, but also in determining exactly which settings may work best for certain strokes. There is no doubt that those more knowledgeable in putter geometry, and those that truly enjoy tinkering, will be in heaven here. However, the company recognizes that there is a strong need for guidance in the fitting process for the rest of us.
To remedy this, the company supplies a great deal of informational material to guide consumers. In addition, they offer free fitting consultations, either in person or remotely. In fact, Astral recommends reaching out to them before making any purchase so they can guide prospective customers in a way that ensures their satisfaction. Both prebuilt putters and “fit kits” are available for sale, so you can match your purchase to exactly how much of a tinkerer you are.
Aesthetics – Astral Putters
All the options in the world don’t matter if customers don’t love the look, feel, and quality of a putter. While the first Astral prototypes were created on a CNC machine purchased by Callaway, the company eventually had to partner with experienced machinists to ensure they were able to consistently meet their incredibly high standards when it comes to tolerances. In fact, one of their biggest challenges early in the formation of the company was finding machinists that could meet these tolerances. You see, to ensure a tight and seamless finished product, one that doesn’t appear to be made of components at all, Astral requires the parts be produced to tolerances of .0015” or less. For reference, that’s 1/10th the thickness of a piece of paper.
It should be noted that adjustable putters are not a new concept, though none have really approached what Astral is doing. Most have failed, and Callaway believes that they are often rejected because of poor aesthetics. Looks can be a tricky aspect of club design to nail, especially for a startup company. Some level of differentiation can help set a brand apart, but golfers are fickle. The same consumers that have come to accept spaceship mallets still have a way at turning up their noses at anything unfamiliar. It doesn’t really make sense, but it’s reality.
Astral set out to build a great looking putter in the hopes that they could make the transition to their radical technology more palatable to customers. They started off by focusing on three accepted body shapes, each milled from carbon steel and finished in all black. The lines on the blade and the mid-mallet (doublewide blade) are relatively squared off, though there is an element of softening on the shoulders directly behind the face.
The swappable face inserts, made of brass, copper, or stainless steel, contrast against the black body and are just larger than a golf ball. They were designed this way to give the appearance of a large impact area that is easy to track with the eyes.
Probably the most unusual, or at least potentially unusual, aspect of the Astral design is the “Z” shaped hosel. We say “potentially unusual” because the visuals created by some of the hosel orientations are unique. However, the black hosel melds perfectly into the black finish of the stock KBS CT Tour shaft and the head. It would be disingenuous to imply that Astral putters are completely nondescript in appearance. They are different in way that sets them apart while maintaining an attractive overall look.
Final Thoughts
As any small business owner will surely attest, the journey for Blake Callaway and Astral Putters has been challenging and rewarding. What began as a fever dream while Callaway was sidelined by COVID blossomed into a crash course in CAD and CNC milling. Prototyping and inventing are pursuits of passion and often result in great reward to soften the hard times. If creating alone sold putters, life would probably be easier but that’s not reality. Manufacturing headaches, marketing, distribution, and a long list of other tasks can take the shine off entrepreneurship, but Callaway is determined. Two appearances at the PGA Show have made it clear that there is an appetite in the industry for Astral’s technology and Callaway came away reinvigorated after both trips. They’ve built relationships with other companies, some that are located near the Astral headquarters in Denver, CO, and they believe that they’ll continue to see the benefits of increased exposure.
Astral hopes to sell each of their customers their last putter, which is a decidedly different approach in the golf equipment industry. They want customers to feel that they’ve invested in something that will pay dividends for years come. To assuage the inevitable “itches” to buy something new, the company offers, and will continue to expand, limited edition add-ons like exotic face inserts and hand-crafted bodies constructed of Damascus and Tempered steel. Additional head shapes and finishes are certainly not out of the question either, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the company’s website.
At THP, we have an innate fondness for innovators and small companies that do things differently. Astral Putters certainly qualifies as both of those things, and we’re hopeful the future remains bright for Callaway and his team. Stay tuned for a full review of the entire Astral line, including the Fit Kit and the remote fitting process in the coming weeks. True to our core belief that golf products are often best reviewed by you the reader, we plan to recruit a group of testers later in the Spring as well. Please take a moment to drop a comment below and let us know what you think of what Astral Putters is doing.
For more information on the products shown and featured in this story, check out their website at www.astralputters.com.
